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THE NEW BLACK MAGIC 



THE NEW 

BLACK MAGIC 

AND 

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OUIJA-BOARD 



BY 



J. GODFREY RAUPERT, K. S. G. 

Formerly a member of the British Society for Psychical 

Research and Author of "Modern Spiritism," 

"Hell and Its Problems," etc., etc. 




NEW YORK 

THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY 






Copyright 1919 
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved By 
The Devin- Adair Company 






5>CI.A530742 



PREFACE 

It should be pointed out that this book does not 
attempt to deal with abnormal phenomena which 
occur spontaneously — with apparitions or forms 
resembling the dead coming unsought for, such 
as have been recorded in all ages of the world's 
history and of which we have had accounts dur- 
ing the great war. Such phenomena follow some 
law which is quite unknown to us, or they are due 
to some act of God necessarily outside our knowl- 
edge and beyond our control. The evidence in 
favor of these phenomena is of a varied kind and 
is, in many respects, very conflicting. It is dif- 
ficult, in most instances, to distinguish the ob- 
jective from the purely subjective. In a variety 
of cases the phantom seen is manifestly the crea- 
tion of the percipient's own brain. The dead, with 
few exceptions, present themselves, not in the 
form in which they appeared when last seen on 
earth, but in that in which the percipient best 
remembers them. Their statements respecting 
the other life and their new environment, too, 
vary considerably and are often quite contra- 
dictory. 

It is admitted, however, that there are credible 
instances in which the departure from the body 

vi 



Preface 

of some member of a family or community has 
been intimated to some distant member by an ap- 
parently objective though fugitive appearance of 
the deceased. We have records of phenomena 
of this kind in the history of the lives of the 
saints and martyrs, and the Catholic Church 
has never denied their reality. On the con- 
trary, she has maintained that reality when a 
skeptical world denied and ridiculed them. But 
she has also maintained that, since such phe- 
nomena may emanate from different sources, 
and since those produced by the act of God may 
be imitated by the enemy of God, it is not possible 
to speak dogmatically respecting them. She has, 
as a rule, tested their aim and character by the 
Apostolic test (see p. 141), or by their effects, 
moral and spiritual, upon the life of the per- 
cipient. She has always discouraged any seek- 
ing after them, and any attempt to regard their 
occurrence as an indication of a peculiar state of 
sanctity. In any case, it will be seen that such 
phenomena have nothing in common and can- 
not be said to be identical with those which are 
invoked and induced, for which a circle has to 
be formed, for which a medium is employed, and 
for which favorable conditions have to be cre- 
ated. It is with such phenomena alone that this 

book deals. 

vii 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Claim of Modern Science . . i 

II. The Claim Specified 17 

III. The Evidence of History .... 29 

IV. The Evidence of Fact and Expe- 

rience 47 

V. The Evidence of True Science . . yy 

VI. The Evidence of Christian Thought 

and Experience 109 

VII. The Evidence of Reason and Common- 
Sense 163 

VIII. The Inevitable Inference . . . 191 

IX. The Truth About the Ouija-Board 205 

X. Index 235 



THE CLAIM OF MODERN SCIENCE 



THE CLAIM OF MODERN SCIENCE 

The reading and thinking world has recently 
been startled by the publication of books and 
articles from die pens of eminent scientific and 
literary men in which the claim is made that re- 
liable communications are being received from 
the spirits of departed human beings and that 
these communications are of such a character 
that they may not unfairly be regarded as a 
New Revelation. 

Two of these writers, the English physicist 
Sir Oliver Lodge, and Sir Conan Doyle, of Sher- 
lock Holmes' fame, who may be regarded as the 
spokesmen of this class of innovators, boldly as- 
sert that, in view of these remarkable and, as 
they think, authentic disclosures, the traditional 
teachings of Christianity will have to undergo 
a radical transformation and that their recon- 
struction, in the light of the new knowledge thus 
obtained, will have to take place. 

That large numbers of that class of persons 
who are always on the lookout for new develop- 
ments in the sphere of Religion and who do not 
know that the new in Religion is seldom the true, 
and that the true is never the new, should wel- 

[33 



The New Black Magic 

come these bold assertions and should rejoice 
that they emanate from such eminently respect- 
able quarters cannot take us by surprise. Such 
persons are always glad to welcome any so-called 
new religion, especially when it is seen to free 
them from obligations to which they have never 
submitted fully and willingly and which provides 
them with a more convenient and comfortable 
and, as they consider, reasonable philosophy of 
life. The multiplicity of the already existing 
"new" religions and new-thought movements is 
a striking illustration of this tendency of the 
modern mind. But that men of high intelligence 
who might be supposed to discern the fallacy of 
such contentions and whose outlook on the world 
might be expected to be of a very different char- 
acter, should put forth such claims is a problem 
perplexing minds apt to think more deeply and 
seriously about such matters. 

To those of us, however, who are more in- 
timately acquainted with this subject and who 
are behind the scenes of the modern psychical 
research movement this problem does not present 
any very great difficulty. They know that these 
scientific researchers, constantly engaged in 
spiritistic experiments, and necessarily obeying 
the laws by which spirit-intercourse becomes 
possible, are themselves the victims of the intel- 

[4] 



The Claim of Modern Science 

ligences who are striving to impose these new 
teachings upon the world, and that their own 
mental apparatus is (imperceptibly to them- 
selves) interfered with to such an extent that 
they lose the power of an all-round view of the 
matter and of forming a true and right judgment 
respecting it. The entire history of spiritism 
with its countless victims goes to confirm the 
truth of this statement, and numbers of disil- 
lusioned spiritists, in all countries, have ac- 
knowledged it. Indubitable spirit-messages, as 
is well known today, cannot be received without 
the cultivation of a certain degree of mind-pas- 
sivity, and mind-passivity constitutes the open 
door by which the personality of the investigator 
is invaded and by which spirit-control is effected. 
The extent of this control necessarily depends 
upon a variety of conditions — mental, moral and 
physical — but it is never absent, and the last per- 
son conscious of it is often the investigator him- 
self. It is here and here alone where the solution 
of the perplexing problem indicated above is to 
be found. I have known many of the men en- 
gaged in the effort to provide the modern rest- 
less world with a new revelation and I am per- 
suaded that they would, years ago, have been the 
first to repudiate the absurd claim which they 
are now making and that they would have pro- 

[5] 



The New Black Magic 

nounced it preposterous. I have already written 
so much on the subject of Spiritism, and my 
books are now so well known, that I do not pro- 
pose to go again over the whole ground. My 
correspondents in all countries have acknowl- 
edged that I have not merely myself investigated 
the phenomena with care and patience but that 
I have, in the interpretation of them, weighed all 
the facts fairly and squarely and that I have left 
no vital consideration out of account. I propose, 
therefore, to address myself in this volume to the 
main contention put forth in these recent state- 
ments and publications: Is a New Revelation, 
by means of spirit-manifestations, in progress? 
Before entering upon an examination of this con- 
tention, however, I am anxious to say a few 
words by way of introduction. It seems to me 
that Sir Conan Doyle's loose and illogical mode 
of reasoning is already apparent from several 
things he says in his account of the progressive 
development of his own religious and philosoph- 
ical ideas. 

He tells us that, although strongly impressed 
by the materialistic philosophy, he had not 
ceased to believe in God. "I had never ceased," 
he writes, "to be a theist. ... I believed then as I 
believe now in an intelligent Force behind all the 
phenomena of nature. . . . But when it came to 

[6] 



The Claim of Modern Science 

a question of our little personalities surviving 
death it seemed to me that the whole analogy of 
nature was against it. It seemed to me a delu- 
sion and I was convinced that death did indeed 
end all, though I saw no reason why that should 
affect our duty towards humanity during our 
transitory existence.'' 

But is not this a wholly unphilosophical and 
illogical mode of reasoning? All true reflection 
and deduction must surely lead to the conclusion 
that belief in the existence of an intelligent cre- 
ative Power and in a future life for man must 
stand or fall together. Our most elementary no- 
tions of intelligence demand this. Our moral 
feelings and instincts dictate it. The entire 
history of Religion bears witness to it. What 
are we to think of a Creator who calls a being 
into existence which has to pass through a long 
training and education, often carried on by 
means of pain and suffering and anguish, who 
endows it with longings and instincts emphati- 
cally pointing to a future life, in which the 
wrongs of the present life are to be righted, who 
provides for the foundation of the closest and 
most affectionate ties and relation, but who has 
nevertheless decreed that all these hopes and de- 
sires, all these longings and aspirations, shall end 
in corruption and the grave — in the entire extinc- 

[7] 



The New Black Magic 

tion and disappearance of the personality ? How 
can we associate the very idea of intelligence 
with such a Creator; how can we be expected to 
love and reverence him and to obey the heartless 
laws which he has made and which rob us of even 
the few transitory pleasures which we might en- 
joy? Does not our entire moral nature, that very 
nature which he has given us, rebel against such 
a notion? Would not all human life be a mock- 
ery and would we not be driven to the inevitable 
conclusion that the Creator is a monster who 
cannot, on any conceivable plea, claim our rever- 
ence and allegiance? Such an inference is ac- 
cording to the necessary and unchanging laws of 
human thought and no reflecting mind can evade 
it. How much more logical is the inference 
drawn from such a mode of reasoning by the 
Apostle St. Paul and expressed in the familiar 
words: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow 
we die." 

But how little the philosophical vaporings of 
the modern scientific intellect can be trusted is 
surely evident from this one example. Again 
both Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Conan Doyle 
seem to be unconscious of the fact that a funda- 
mental fallacy underlies the very notion of a 
"New" Revelation. They would surely be more 
consistent and logical if they spoke of these 

[8] 



The Claim of Modern Science 

spirit-messages as a true or the true revelation 
intimating that the old one has been found to be 
false and is therefore no revelation at all. For, 
since the so-called new revelation contravenes the 
old in all its vital characteristics the latter could 
never have been a revelation in any intelligible 
sense, and must therefore be regarded as a 
grievous imposition on the credulity of mankind. 
It is here, be it carefully noted, not a question 
of a progressive disclosure of divine truth or 
truths such as we have in the records of the Old 
and New Testaments, God revealing Himself 
gradually: first by the promulgation of a series 
of elementary laws, then by means of inspired 
patriarchs and prophets and seers, and finally 
by the incarnation of His Only-Begotten Son, the 
later disclosures confirming and illuminating and 
adding to the earlier. It is here a question of a 
complete and utter revolution and upheaval, the 
new revelation contravening the old, and elim- 
inating its essential and characteristic teachings 
and principles. For even such radical innova- 
tors and iconoclasts as Lodge and Doyle will 
scarcely dare to assert, in view of the indubitable 
facts of History, that the doctrine of the In- 
carnation of the Son of God — of the Word made 
Flesh — in the historic sense, in the afterthought 
of theology and not a vital and integral part of 

[9] 



The New Black Magic 

the primitive Christian Revelation. And since 
the spirits of the seance-room everywhere em- 
phatically deny the truth of this doctrine, the old 
revelation could never have been true; but man- 
kind must, for nearly two thousand years, have 
been laboring under a fatal delusion. Or are 
we seriously to consider the absurd suggestion 
that what was true in one age ceased to be true in 
another, and that the all-wise Creator stooped 
or consented to a deception which any normal 
human mind would unhesitatingly pronounce 
contemptible, seeing that in this very deception 
have centered the highest hopes and noblest as- 
pirations and most painful sacrifices of the best 
of men and women throughout nearly twenty 
centuries of human life. And at what particular 
epoch, one is tempted to ask, did the old revela- 
tion cease to be true and the disillusionment of 
mankind become necessary? The utter ab- 
surdity of this scientific juggling with ideas and 
principles, which alas! passes muster in even in- 
tellectual and instructed circles, is very effectively 
exhibited in Mr. Gilbert Chesterton's books, espe- 
cially in his Orthodoxy (p. 135), where he 
writes : 

"An imbecile habit has arisen in modern con- 
troversy of saying that such and such a creed 
can be held in one age but cannot be held in an- 

[10] 



The Claim of Modern Science 

other. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in 
the twelfth century but is incredible in the twen- 
tieth. You might as well say that a certain phil- 
osophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be 
believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say 
of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to 
half-past three but not suitable to half-past four. 
What a man can believe depends upon his phil- 
osophy, not upon the clock of the century." 

What cannot be sufficiently emphasized, by 
way of introduction to a discussion of the sub- 
ject, is the circumstance that we cannot here 
speak of a reconstruction or reinterpretation of 
Christianity. The use of such terms is mis- 
chievous in the extreme since they are only cal- 
culated to throw dust into the eyes of the public 
and to hide the real truth of the matter from the 
minds of sensitive persons. It is merely "an un- 
loosening of the ropes one by one, gently and 
gradually," as the spirits would term it, and as 
they have counseled it in order not to disquiet the 
consciences of those still thinking along Chris- 
tian lines, and hence likely to get alarmed at the 
character of these new disclosures. But there is 
no possibility of a reconciliation between Historic 
Christianity and Spiritism. The teachings of 
one are destructive of those of the other, and 
if one is true the other is necessarily false. Some 

[ii] 



The New Black Magic 

writers have attempted this kind of reconciliation 
and it has found favor with certain orders of 
minds. But the well-informed student of the 
subject cannot fail to see through the deception 
and discern the underlying fallacy. Such so- 
called reconciliations have only been possible, 
either by unduly emphasizing and falsely inter- 
preting certain elements in Spiritism which bear 
some surface resemblance to Christian teachings 
and manifestations, or by stripping Christianity 
of all its essential and characteristic doctrines 
and reducing it to a mere system of ethics, such 
as the world knew of before the advent of Christ, 
and as it has grown familiar with in the present 
age. 

That this is so will be clearly seen from the 
introductory statement to the following chapter 
in which I propose to summarize the essential 
contents of the "New Revelation," as they may 
be gathered from the writings of some of our re- 
constructionists and from the emphatic teachings 
and assertions of those "higher" spirits who 
manifested through the mediumship of the late 
Mr. Stainton Moses, and whose disclosures are 
regarded as a kind of Bible by spiritists and in- 
vestigators. 

Mr. Stainton Moses himself, who had been a 
clergyman of the Church of England, and who 

[12] 



The Claim of Modern Science 

was therefore well able to form a judgment as 
to what constitutes historical and essential 
Christianity, fully admitted that, if the spirit- 
disclosures were true, they meant revolution and 
not simply reform, and he was honest enough to 
face and proclaim that fact. He did not seek to 
evade the issues by attempting impossible com- 
promises or reconstructions. 

"Spiritualism," he wrote, "is revolution, not 
simply reform. It is no time for polite patching 
up; we are in the very dust and din of spiritual 
strife, in the thick of a great spiritual conflict, 
the effects of which we shall try in vain to escape, 
and it is no time now to go about deprecating 
noise and timidly sprinkling rose-water to quench 
the powder fumes of battle. The battle is upon us 
and it is waste time to grumble at its smoke 
and din." 

Another writer 1 on this subject states the case 
equally emphatically : 

"The religion of the future," he says, "is in our 
midst already with signs and wonders uprising 
like a swollen tide. . . . Christianity has spent its 
force and now another revelation has succeeded 
it — a revelation suited to the needs of the time." 

When Mr. Stainton Moses first received these 
spirit-messages and realized that they violently 

iSt. George Stock in "Attempts at Truth," P. 128. 
[13 3 



The New Black Magic 

contradicted his Christian beliefs and habitual 
modes of thought he had the strongest possible 
misgivings as to the character and aim of the in- 
telligences conveying them and, for a time, he 
shrank from a continuation of this intercourse. 
And it is evident, too, that, at this period, the 
answers to his questions furnished by the spirit 
Imperator did not at all satisfy him. 

"I could not get rid of the idea," he wrote, 
"that the Faith of Christendom was practically 
upset by their issue. I believed that, however it 
might be disguised, such would be the outcome 
of these communications in the end. The cen- 
tral dogmas seemed especially attacked and it 
was this that startled me. . . . Then came a doubt 
as to how far all might be the work of satan 
transformed into an angel of light laboring for 
the subversion of the Faith." He addressed the 
following question to Imperator (one of the 
"higher" spirits) : "It would help me somewhat 
if I could picture you as a definite individuality. 
But, on the whole, I wish you would leave me 
alone." 

Imperator's answer was: 

"The orthodox religionists of His (Christ's) 
time charged Him with association with Beelze- 
bub. When you have had time to think we will 
answer." 

[14] 



The Claim of Modern Science 

But Mr. Stainton Moses was again and again 
urged to bring to the circle a patient and passive 
mind and, as this passivity increased, the normal 
operations of thought and reflection were inter- 
fered with, and the principles of the new spirit- 
revelation were accepted. He ceased to be a 
Christian and embraced the conventional spirit- 
creed and philosophy. But he retained sense 
enough to recognize that that creed is wholly and 
utterly irreconcilable with the doctrines of His- 
torical Christianity. 



[*Sl 



II 

THE CLAIM SPECIFIED 



THE CLAIM SPECIFIED 

Although there is, as the literature of Spirit- 
ism testifies, and as is universally admitted, the 
greatest possible divergence in the teachings 
given by the spirits in various countries, the es- 
sential principles of the ''New Revelation" re- 
specting which there is agreement may be stated 
as follows. I will quote Lodge's and Doyle's own 
words and the statements of those spirits in 
whose utterances the largest porportion of spirit- 
ists place confidence. 

1. The "New Revelation' is divine and au- 
thoritative. 

''I seemed suddenly to see that this sub- 
ject with which I had so long dallied was 
not merely the study of a force outside the 
rules of science but that it was really some- 
thing tremendous, a breaking-down of the 
wall between two worlds, a direct message 
from beyond, a call of hope and of guidance 
to the human race at the time of its deepest 
affliction. ... A new revelation seemed to me 
in the course of delivery to the human race, 
though how far it is still in what I may call 
the John-the-Baptist stage and how far 
some greater fullness and clearness may be 
[19] 



The New Black Magic 

expected hereafter is more than any man 
can say." (Doyle.) 

"We claim our authority to be divine and 
await with confidence the acceptance of our 
mission when the times are ripe for our 
teaching." (The Spirit Imperator.) 
Man has not fallen. 

"So long as there was any question of the 
fall of man there was at least some sort of 
explanation of such phrases (redemption 
from sin), but when it became certain that 
man had never fallen — when with ever 
fuller knowledge we could trace our an- 
cestral course down through the cave-man 
and drift-man back to that shadowy and far- 
off time when the man-like ape slowly 
evolved into the ape-like man — looking back 
on all this vast succession of life, we knew 
that it had always been rising from step to 
step. Never zvas there any evidence of a 
fair (Doyle.) 

"The spirits reject as a baseless figment 
the story of a fall from a state of primeval 
innocence and perfection to a state of deg- 
radation in the person of Adam and Eve." 
(Stainton Moses.) 

"For the present you may know that the 
theological story of a fall from a state of 
[20] 



The Claim Specified 

purity to a state of sin, as usually detailed 
and accepted, is misleading." (The Spirit 
Imperator. ) 
3. The Incarnation and Sufferings and Death 
of Jesus Christ were in no sense an atone- 
ment for the sins of man. Christ was some 
higher created intelligence who came to re- 
form the world by his moral teaching and 
his personal example. 

"One can see no justice in a vicarious sac- 
rifice nor in the God who could be placated 
by such means. . . . Too much seemed to be 
made of Christ's death. It is no uncommon 
thing to die for an idea. Men die continu- 
ally for their convictions. Thousands of our 
lads are doing it at this instant in France. 
... In my opinion far too much stress 
has been laid upon Christ's death and far 
too little on His life. That was where 
the true grandeur and the true lesson lay. 
According to spirit-teaching, the Christ- 
spirit came down upon the earth at a time of 
great earthly depravity to give to the people 
the example and teaching of an ideal life and 
then returned to his own high station, hav- 
ing left an example which is still occasion- 
ally followed. Nothing here of atonement 
and redemption." 

[21] 



The New Black Magic 

"In such a view reason and faith would be 
reconciled. . . . Christianity must change or 
perish. Our churches are half-empty; 
women their chief supporters; both learned 
and poor, in town or country, are alienated 
from it." (Doyle.) 

"It was not the eternal purpose of God 
that Jesus should die when the work of the 
Christ was but just commencing. That was 
man's work, foul, evil, accursed. . . . He 
came in the sense that all regenerators of 
men have been their saviours. ... In the 
sense that the scene on Calvary was fore- 
ordained to occur when man consummated 
his foul deed he came not. And this is a 
mighty truth." (The Spirit Imperator.) 
Death is not a terminus fixing man's destiny. 

His education continues after death. The 
consequences of sin are never permanent. 
The imperfect or undeveloped soul passes, 
when separated from the body, into a tem- 
porary penal state which becomes a means 
of advancing its development and education. 

"The spirit (after death) is not a glorified 
angel or a goblin damned, but it is simply 
the person himself, containing all his 
strength and weakness, his wisdom and his 
folly, exactly as he has retained his personal 
[22] 



The Claim Specified 

appearance. . . . Hell drops out altogether, as 
it has long dropped out of the thoughts of 
every reasonable man. This odious con- 
ception, so blasphemous in its view of the 
Creator, arose from the exaggerations of 
oriental phrases and may perhaps have been 
of service in a coarse age where men were 
frightened by fires as wild beasts are scared 
by the travellers. Hell as a permanent place 
does not exist. But the idea of punishment, 
of purifying chastisement, in fact of Pur- 
gatory, is justified by the reports from the 
other side." (Doyle.) 

"To suppose that the short period of 
earth-life is sufficient to save or damn a soul 
to all eternity and that the act of death has 
power to convert an ordinary man into either 
an angel or a demon, to make him happy 
in the society of the highest saints and able 
to associate with Deity, or to condemn him 
to fraternize with the lowest of the low, 
amid whatever physical or mental torments 
were imagined as likely to accompany and 
emphasize his fall from grace — all this was 
so repugnant to common-sense that as a mat- 
ter of fact it was not believed." (Lodge.) 

"We know of no Hell save that within the 
soul ; a Hell which is fed by the flame of un- 



The New Black Magic 

purified and untamed lust and passion, 
which is kept alive by remorse and agony of 
sorrow; which is fraught with the pangs 
that spring up unbidden from the results of 
past misdeeds, and from which the only 
escape lies in retracing the steps and in cul- 
tivating the qualities which shall bear fruit 
in love and knowledge of God. In perpetu- 
ally progressing the spirit finds its true hap- 
piness. There is no finality; none, none, 
none!" (The Spirit Imperator.) 
As I am anxious to avoid writing a big book 
and to again traverse ground already covered in 
my earlier works, I have thus briefly and con- 
cisely summarized the main teachings of the 
"New Revelation" from which it will be seen that 
they are wholly subversive of Historical Chris- 
tianity. There cannot manifestly here be any 
question of a reconstruction or reinterpretation 
in the light of the new knowledge. Such phrases 
are clearly utterly misleading, and are merely 
attempts to let the Christian down gently- — not 
to alarm and disquiet him overmuch. If the dis- 
closures of the higher spirits are true, Historical 
Christianity is false — the Apostles' Creed is 
based upon a misconception. If Christianity, on 
the other hand, is true, these new teachings har- 
bor a perilous delusion and the higher spirits 

[24] 



The Claim Specified 

are liars and deceivers. We have therefore to 
address ourselves to the question: What is the 
evidence in favor of their veracity? And, in 
attempting to answer this question, we shall have 
to examine the matter from various points of 
view — to seek for light in many directions. The 
subject is too serious, and too vital in its issues 
to dismiss it with a superficial consideration or to 
fall back upon our personal inclinations or pre- 
conceptions. 

"The body of fresh doctrine," says Sir Conan 
Doyle, "comes in the main through automatic 
writing where the hand of the medium is con- 
trolled, either by an alleged human-being ... or 
an alleged angel.'' "These," he goes on to say, 
"are supplemented by trance-utterances, verbal 
messages of spirits given through the lips of the 
mediums . . . sometimes by direct voice, occa- 
sionally through table-tilting." 

To the question: "How do we know that they 
are really from the beyond, the answer must 
be that we require signs which we can test before 
we accept assertions which we cannot test. These 
signs are, as in the case of Stainton Moses, when 
the messages are accompanied by a number of 
abnormal gifts. If Miss Julia Ames can tell Mr. 
Stead things in her own earth-life of which he 
could not have had cognizance, and if these 

[25] 



The New Black Magic 

things are shown, when tested, to be true, then 
one is more inclined to think that those things 
which cannot be tested are true also." 

"If Raymond (Sir Oliver Lodge's son) can 
tell us of a photograph, no copy of which has 
reached England and which proved to be ex- 
actly as he had described it, and if he can give us 
through the lips of strangers all sorts of details 
of his home-life which his own relatives had to 
verify before they found them to be true, is it 
unreasonable to suppose that he is fairly accurate 
in his description of his own experiences and 
state of life at the very moment at which he is 
communicating ?" 

Now in order to simplify the matter, I will 
emphasize but two conditions which all reason- 
able and right-thinking men must regard as nec- 
essary conditions on which we can even consider 
the question of a new revelation. 

1. Such a revelation must, in the first place, 
be consistent with our instinctive ideas of the 
dignity, justice, and holiness of God. 

2. It must, secondly, both in its character and 
effects and in the mode of its delivery, be in ac- 
cord with our religious feelings and the dictates 
of our reason. 

As I feel confident that no reflecting reader, 
whatever his religious or philosophical attitude 

[26] 



The Claim Specified 

may be, will find fault with this definition of the 
inevitable attitude of a mind seeking the solu- 
tion of such a problem as this, I can but ask him 
to keep these two principles steadily in view 
throughout the enquiry. Looking at all the facts 
of the case then which our modern knowledge 
and our experience have brought to light, what 
is the evidence respecting the true origin and 
character of these spirit-disclosures? 



[*7l 



Ill 

THE EVIDENCE OF HISTORY 



THE EVIDENCE OF HISTORY 

Although it is incidentally admitted by the 
scientific investigators of psychical phenomena 
that intercourse with the unseen spirit-world has 
been known and practiced in all ages of the 
world's history and by practically all races and 
nations, they nevertheless make statements from 
which they clearly desire it to be inferred that 
they have made marvelous discoveries and that 
the objective reality of this intercourse has been 
established by modern science. 

Some years ago Sir Oliver Lodge declared that 
the wall which may be conceived to be dividing 
the two states of being was "wearing thin in 
places" and that, amid the roar of water and of 
other noises, we on our side (that is he and his 
fellow researchers) are beginning to hear now 
and again the strokes of the pick-axes of our 
comrades on the other side." 

This statement, of course, exemplifies one of 
those many conceits and presumptions of modern 
science of which we have such striking evidence 
in our days. For a single glance at history goes 
to demonstrate the fact that, so far from making 
any new discovery in this sphere of research, 
scientific men have been the last to come to a 

[3i] 



The New Black Magic 

knowledge of facts with which even the savage 
man was acquainted and with which the man in 
the street has been long familiar. So far, there- 
fore, as any claim to newness in the matter of the 
mode of delivery of the "New Revelation" is 
concerned, the claim absolutely falls to the 
ground. So-called revelations, by means of 
spirit-manifestations, have been made in all times 
of human history, and that hole in the wall or 
partition, of which Sir Oliver speaks, has been 
known to exist as long as man has lived on this 
earth. It was the materialistic scientist who so 
persistently denied it and who, as in many other 
matters, had "his facts all wrong." 

And the very use of the word Necromancy in- 
dicates that these manifestations and disclosures 
were pretty universally believed to emanate from 
the spirits of the dead. 

The first fact, therefore, which we have to rec- 
ognize and keep in mind is that there is nothing 
new, either in these revelations or in the mode 
of their delivery. Spiritism and mediumship are 
as old as the world. It is merely in the form 
in which they have displayed themselves that 
they have varied in different ages and with dif- 
ferent races. 

Under the word Necromancy we read in the 
New International Encyclopedia: 

[32] 



The Evidence of History 

"A method of divination by which the dead 
were supposed to be conjured up and to answer 
questions concerning the future. Its practice 
was certainly extremely ancient. It was con- 
demned in the Old Testament, and among the 
Greeks it was familiar in Homer's day. In his- 
torical days necromancy was practiced by priests 
and consecrated persons at many shrines in 
Greece. It was also current among the Romans 
although banned by the Church under Constan- 
tine. It was also employed by the Northern peo- 
ples, and, in the mediaeval and later period, 
passed over into sorcery." 

The Catholic Encyclopedia makes a statement 
to the same effect : 

"Along with other forms of divination and 
magic, necromancy is found in every nation of 
antiquity and is a practice common to paganism 
at all times and in all countries, but nothing cer- 
tain can be said as to the place of its origin." 

All research goes to show that it was known 
and practiced in Persia, Babylonia, Chaldea, 
Etruria, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Among the 
Romans Horace several times alludes to the in- 
vocation of the dead. Cicero testifies that his 
friend Appius practiced necromancy. In the 
first Christian centuries it was common among 
the pagans. 

[33] 



The New Black Magic 

Sir Conan Doyle himself naively informs us 
that M. Jacolliot, an Indian Judge, "found among 
the Indian Fakirs every phenomenon of advanced 
European mediumship, everything which Home 
(the famous medium) had done. The Fakirs 
said that they were done by the Pitris or spirits, 
and that the only difference in their procedure 
from ours seemed to be that they made more use 
of direct evocation. They claimed that these 
powers were handed down from time immemorial 
and traced back to the Chaldees." 

From the records of Old Testament two facts 
become abundantly clear : 

1. The various known forms of mediumship 
and necromancy were commonly practiced. 

2. The practice was condemned by the Jewish 
law-givers and prophets as being destructive of 
the true religious and moral life of the people. 

In Leviticus XIX, 31, we read: 

"Go not aside after wizards, neither ask any- 
thing of soothsayers to be defiled by them; I am 
the Lord your God." 

In Leviticus XX, 6: 

"The soul that shall go aside after magicians 
and soothsayers, and shall commit fornication 
with them, I will set my face against that soul 
and destroy it out of the midst of its people," 

In Leviticus XX, 27: 

[34] 



The Evidence of History 

"A man or woman, in whom there is a pythoni- 
cal or divining spirit, dying, let them die; they 
shall stone them ; their blood be upon them." 

In Deuteronomy XVIII ? 10: 

"Neither let there be found among you any- 
one that . . . consulteth soothsayers, or ob- 
serveth dreams and omens, neither let there be 
any wizard, nor charmer, nor anyone that con- 
sulteth pythonic spirits, or fortune-tellers, or that 
seeketh the truth from the dead." 

Isaias VIII, 19: 

"And when they say to you: seek of pythons 
and of diviners, who mutter in their enchant- 
ments; should not the people seek of their God, 
for the living of the dead ?" 

In the records of the New Testament, we are 
confronted by the remarkable fact that the spirits 
speaking to Our Lord through the mouths of the 
possessed, or "controlled" as the modern psychi- 
cal researchers would say, and using the lan- 
guage and thought-forms of ordinary human be- 
ings, were always denounced by Him as being 
devils. He did not parley with them ; He did not 
inquire what they had to say for themselves, 
what revelation they might have to make. He 
cast them out. In no single instance does He, 
the spirit from the higher spheres who, accord- 
ing to the spiritists, might reasonably be expected 

[353 



The New Black Magic 

to acknowledge at least the legitimacy of this 
mode of communication and intercourse, dis- 
play the slightest hesitation in the matter. Not 
once did He ask these obsessing entities to iden- 
tify themselves, or to tell them something respect- 
ing their supposed past earth-life and the pur- 
pose of their return. From no single recorded in- 
stance can the modern spiritist derive the faintest 
measure of support for his contention. 

And the obsessed, themselves, and the people 
who kept them, did not seem to entertain the 
slightest doubt on the subject. We read in St. 
Matthew IX, 33: 

"After the devil was cast out, the dumb man 
spoke and the multitude wondered," etc. 

And this is characteristic of all Our Lord's 
dealings with the "controlled," which are so fre- 
quent and so well known that it is not necessary 
to quote them in detail here. 

In the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 16, we 
have the account of St. Paul's dealings with a 
woman who manifestly practiced what we would 
call today the art of mediumship. It was the 
case of "a certain girl . . . who brought to her 
masters much gain by divining." Adapting her- 
self, like many mediums of our own time, to the 
situation and seeking, no doubt, to secure the 
favor of the Apostles, she acknowledged tnem to 

[36] 



The Evidence of History 

be "the servants of the most high God." "And 
this she did many days." But St. Paul, too, dis- 
played no manner of doubt as to the nature of 
the woman's "gift" or of the character of the 
entity operating by its means. He commanded 
the spirit "in the name of Jesus Christ to go out 
of her. And he went out the same hour." 

When we trace the record further down to the 
early Christian centuries, we come upon evidence 
which is equally clear and conclusive. The 
Fathers and Doctors of the Church bear testi- 
mony that the spirits, speaking through the 
mouths of the "controlled," make assertions sim- 
ilar to those made by Doyle's spirits today; but 
the clear spiritual insight of those sturdy Chris- 
tians, and the careful observation of accompany- 
ing phenomena, made it easy for them to discover 
and expose the delusion. 

The philosopher St. Justin, who became a 
Christian in A.D. 135, and was martyred in 166, 
declared . . . 2 "that it is nothing else that the 
demons strive after than to draw away man from 
God the Creator and from Christ, His only- 
Begotten." 

In a passage quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas, 
St. Augustine, writing in the fifth century, said of 
the demons that they sometimes learn with the 

s I Apologia, 58. 

[37] 



The New Black Magic 

greatest ease the dispositions of man, not only 
such as are expressed by words, but also such as 
are conceived in thought when certain signs are 
thereby expressed on the bodily organism of the 
soul. 

St. Thomas himself, writing in the thirteenth 
century, says that "often the demons simulate to 
be the souls of the dead to confirm heathens who 
believe this in their error." 

Impersonation, admittedly so frequently ob- 
served and practiced in our time, is clearly an 
ancient trick, but strangely successful in deceiv- 
ing the scientific mind. 

Now what are the practical lessons which we 
learn from the simple facts of history, pagan, 
Jewish and Christian ; what are the inferences to 
be drawn from them ? 

1. They teach us, in the first place, that so 
far as the records of history go, it is evident that 
a mode of communication between the world's 
seen and unseen has always existed ; that the wall 
dividing the two states has always been "thin in 
places." Science, therefore, has made no new 
discovery and, if we are to judge by the beliefs 
and practices of the pagan nations, it is equally 
evident that some kind of revelation from that 
mysterious world has always been in process of 
delivery. 

[38] 



The Evidence of History 

2. We are, in the second place, confronted 
by the undeniable fact that the rulers and law- 
givers, under God's ancient covenant, always and 
without exception pronounced this intercourse to 
be evil and forbade it under the severest penalties. 
This fact, of course, can only be accounted for 
by the circumstance that it was not only contrary 
to the declared law of God, but that experience 
had proved these practices to be disastrous to the 
moral life of the people. 

The Jews manifestly had acquired a knowledge 
of these practices in their contact with the neigh- 
boring pagan nations, and indulgence in them 
was known to estrange them from the love and 
service of the One true God. 

And, strange to say, we have a modern scien- 
tific man,himself a confessed spiritist, recogniz- 
ing and bearing witness to this fact, and confirm- 
ing the reasonableness of the Jewish enactments 
on the ground of personal experience. 

"'These practices were condemned/' writes 
Sir William Barrett, "in unmeasured terms by 
the Hebrew prophets. . . . They were prohibited, 
as a study of the whole subject shows — not only, 
or chiefly, because they were the practices and 
part of the religious rites of the pagan nations 
around, but mainly because they tended to ob- 
scure the divine idea and to weaken the supreme 

[39 3 



The New Black Magic 

faith in and reverent worship of the One Omnip- 
otent Being whom the nation was set apart to 
proclaim. . . . Instead of the arm of the Lord 
beyond and above them, a motley crowd of pious, 
lying, vain or gibbering spirits would seem to 
people the unseen; and weariness, perplexity and, 
finally, despair would enervate and destroy the 
nation/' 

And, "the same peril," naively continues this 
spiritist professor, "exists today and through all 
time will continue to exist." Here, at any rate, 
we have a learned professor, intimately ac- 
quainted with the subject, who does not place 
any confidence in any new revelations emanating 
from this quarter or coming to us by means of 
these practices. 

3. We are, in the third place, surely justified 
in asking the following questions : 

How comes it to pass that, seeing the way of 
communication has always been open, the great 
departed teachers and exponents of Christianity 
have never made use of it in order to disillusion 
us respecting our supposed misbeliefs and our 
misinterpretations of the words of Christ? Ac- 
cording to the new spirit-revelation, Christendom 
must, soon after the death of Christ, have lapsed 
into the grossest idolatry, worshipping a higher 
spirit as God, and building up upon his simple 

[40] 



The Evidence of History 

teachings a so-called supernatural system of doc- 
trine which is wholly without foundation in fact 
and inference. 

These great Fathers and Teachers must surely 
have discovered this on their entrance into the 
spirit-world and must have conceived a burning 
desire to correct the error and to inform their 
disciples and followers of the fact. And we may 
surely add that God Himself might well be be- 
lieved to be a willing party to such rectifying dis- 
closures, for were not His own honor and truth 
and dignity involved ? Indeed we may go so far 
as to say that if any legitimate and lawful means 
of communication, by way of mediumship, ever 
existed, we have, in view of so serious a matter, 
a right to expect such a setting right of mistaken 
ideas and beliefs. 

But neither have such rectifying disclosures 
from manifestly verifiable and authentic sources, 
and by means of a safe and rational method of 
communication, ever come, nor is there the 
slightest evidence that the disciples of the great 
teachers named have received any impressions 
from the unseen world to that effect. 

Telepathy, the power of one mind to impress 
another mind, is now universally acknowledged 
to be a phenomenon in constant operation in the 
universe, and it is fully conceded that if this can 

[4i] 



The New Black Magic 

be shown to be so in the case of incarnate minds, 
it may be presumed to be possible between minds 
Jwcarnate and minds wcarnate. 

And the doctrine of the Communion of Saints 
fully confirms all this. We pray to the Saints 
and ask their intercession because we believe that 
they can hear us and that they know, not only 
what is going on in our minds, but what is going 
on in the world with respect to the work in which 
they were keenly interested while on earth. 

Now imagine St. Dominic, St. Ignatius or St. 
Alphonsus discovering in the other world that 
their teaching had been all wrong and that their 
disciples today are proclaiming to the world a 
most deadly error and superstition, and yet these 
great and wise men finding no means at all of 
conveying this fact to the minds of the living, 
either by direct communication or by means of 
unmistakable telepathic impressions! 

If credible communications can be made by the 
derelicts of the spiritual world, they can surely 
be made by the spirits of great and intelligent 
and conscientious personalities who might rea- 
sonably be expected to devise means of proving 
to us the veracity and reliability of their state- 
ments. 

Nothing of this kind has ever occurred. So 
far the disclosures of the "New Revelation" have 

[42] 



The Evidence of History 

come from spirits whom we cannot identi r 
lie and cheat and contradict themselves, anc 
adopt a method of communication which op 
the door to a hundred errors and misapprehc 
sions and which, in most instances, prov 
morally and physically disastrous to the recipien 
Experience, moreover, establishes the fact ths 
these anti-Christian exposures generally come to 
those who, for one reason or another, have al 
ready parted with belief in the supernatura 
truths of Christianity, and their experiences are 
therefore, examples of that well-known "adapta- 
tion to existing states of mind" for which the 
spirits of the seance-room are famous. These 
adaptations are calculated to win the favor and 
\ confidence of the recipient. We all know today 
that the spirits, as the late Dr. Lapponi put it, 
"are pious with the pious . . . learned with the 
lovers of learning, thoughtless with the gay, vul- 
gar and gross with the vulgar." Mr. Stainton 
Moses himself, through whose mediumship the 
most authentic spirit-messages are claimed to 
have been received, was constrained to write: 

"Some spirits will assent to leading questions 
and, possessed apparently with the desire to 
please, or unconscious of the import of what they 
say, or without moral consciousness, will say any- 
thing. Such motiveless lying bespeaks a deeply 

[43 1 



The New Black Magic 

ture. . . . Such an impostor, acting with 
s of sincerity, must be as "satan clothed in 
at." 3 

This being the case, how can we ever be sure 
^at a credible and authoritative disclosure ema- 
nates from this source ? How can any sane man 
alk about a new revelation issuing from such 
quarters and coming by such means ? Whenever, 
)y God's permission, without any human initi- 
itive, and by the operation of laws wholly un- 
known to us, the soul of some saintly person has 
been allowed to make a communication, the aim 
has always been to confirm the truth of the 
Historic Faith and to implore the recipient to 
persevere in it. And, in my close intercourse 
with the clergy and members of Religious Orders 
in all parts of the world, I have never found that 
any telepathic impression, calculated to affect this 
Faith, has ever been received. On the contrary, 
I have always found their sense of the truth of 
the Historic Faith, and of their bounden duty to 
hold it in all its fullness, to be exceptionally 
strong. In individual instances the loss of this 
Faith can always be traced back to the neglect of 
prayer and to a loose and careless mode of life. 
Logical reflection, therefore, and the weighing of 
all the facts of the case, from the historic point of 

3 Spirit-Identity. 

[44] 



The Evidence of History 

view, exhibit the utter absurdity of the claim that, 
by means of spiritistic practices, a new revelation 
is in process of delivery. This claim is wholly in- 
consistent with our ideas of the dignity and holi- 
ness of God, and is altogether contrary to the dic- 
tates of right reason. In view, therefore, of what 
is now going on in the world we can but exclaim 
with the Hebrew prophet : 

"With desolation is the whole world made 
desolate because no man thinketh in his heart." 



[451 



IV 



THE EVIDENCE OF FACT AND 
EXPERIENCE 



THE EVIDENCE OF FACT AND 
EXPERIENCE 

In examining the subject under consideration in 
the light of actual experience and of those facts to 
which the modern reconstructionists of Chris- 
tianity are strangely reticent in drawing atten- 
tion, we concede, of course, the fundamental 
claim of Spiritism. The phenomena observed be- 
yond all doubt prove the existence and operation 
of spirit-agencies independent of and apart from 
the observer. In view of the abundant and strik- 
ing evidence which we possess today, and which 
is the result of long and severe sifting, we need 
not waste our time in any contention with the 
doubter. His doubt, for the most part, is not due 
to superior intellectual acumen but to ignorance 
of the facts, and all we can do is to refer him to 
the recorded facts. If he then continues to doubt 
he must either be afflicted with constitutional ob- 
tuseness, or because the facts established are seen 
to upset his accepted philosophy of life. We know 
that there are some persons who do not want to 
believe and whom no kind of evidence respecting 
the spirit-world would convince. Our Lord no 
doubt had such persons in mind when He said 

[49] 



The New Blacp: Magic 

that "they would not believe though one rose 
from the dead." 

I have already gone over the whole ground in 
my other books; I will therefore here content 
myself with a single statement from the pen of 
Dr. Venzano, an Italian physician, and a cautious 
and experienced investigator of the phenomena 
of many years' standing. He sums up his de- 
tailed record establishing the independence and 
objectivity of the manifestations observed in 
these words: 

"The duration of the apparitions, the perfect 
agreement of the experimenters observing them, 
the shadows they cast on the walls of the gas- 
lighted room, all serve to disprove every 
possibility of hallucination. One of the most 
striking peculiarities of the manifestations ob- 
served is that they appeared and remained 
visible for some time in such brilliant gas-light 
that it was possible, as Professor Morselli 
observed, to read even the small print of a news- 
paper." This surely is clear and should be con- 
clusive. 

It is a question, therefore, not of the reality 
and objectivity of the phenomena, but of their 
interpretation. What confidence can we be ex- 
pected to place in the disclosures made by their 
means ? 

t5o] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

Sir Conan Doyle 4 tells us that "this body of 
fresh doctrine comes in the main through auto- 
matic writing where the hand of the human me- 
dium is controlled either by an alleged human 
being ... or by an alleged angel. These written 
communications are supplemented by a vast num- 
ber of trance-utterances and by the verbal mes- 
sages of spirits given through the lips of me- 
diums. Sometimes it has even come by direct 
voices. . . . Occasionally it has come through 
the family-circle and table-tilting. . . . Some- 
times it has come through the hand of a child." 

From this statement an inexperienced or 
partially-informed person might easily be led 
to conclude that these disclosures come to us un- 
sought for and uninvited — perhaps by some im- 
pulse proceeding from God Himself, and by 
means of some gift bestowed upon chosen in- 
dividuals, not unlike the revelations and inspira- 
tions imparted to prophets and apostles of old. 

But this is, of course, an entire misapprehen- 
sion of the facts of the case, as experience and 
observation have established them. These com- 
munications never come unsought for and by 
normal and natural means. They presuppose 

4 1 am quoting his words, not because his statements have 
any specific value, but because they represent and sum up the 
contentions of that class of experimenters who claim that, in 
spiritism, a new revelation is in process of delivery. 

[Si] 



The New Black Magic 

the cultivation of what we term mediumship. 
And mediumship is not, as many writers would 
wish us to infer, a natural gift but a certain men- 
tal and physical condition which has to be dili- 
gently developed and cultivated, and which is 
really a morbid and abnormal state of the mind 
and the body. It is beyond all doubt true that 
any person can become a medium, provided he is 
willing to submit his will and intelligence uncon- 
ditionally and systematically to the invading 
spirit, and allow his body to serve the ends which 
the spirit has in view. The degree of medium- 
ship attained depends upon the frequency of the 
experiment and the mental and physical consti- 
tution of the subject. In some instances this de- 
velopment is very rapid because there is a natural 
tendency to pass into the passive state; in others 
the protecting barrier which nature has erected is 
only gradually broken down and the development 
is slow and labored. But, with entire willingness 
and patience, the end can always be achieved. 
This disposes of the absurd and wholly false as- 
sertion and belief that mediumship is a gift from 
God which must have been imparted for a wise 
purpose and which we are consequently justified 
in employing. To those who have witnessed the 
repulsive struggles of even a developed physical 
medium gradually "passing under control" there 

[52] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

cannot be any doubt on the subject. And all 
experimenters know that, in the case of mental 
and subjective mediumship, true spirit-messages, 
unadulterated by the subconscious activities of 
the medium's own mind, are only possible when 
the mind is entirely passive and its normal con- 
scious operations are suspended. The familiar 
complaint of the spirits is that they can achieve 
so little because passivity is so imperfect. Mr. 
Stainton Moses himself, of whom Sir Conan 
Doyle tells us that he was the finest medium Eng- 
land has produced, and through whom the most 
credible spirit-revelations are believed to have 
been received, tells us that messages were written 
under various circumstances; "as a rule it was 
necessary that I should be isolated and the more 
passive my mind the more easy zuas the communi- 
cation." The first fact, therefore, which we have 
to recognize is the circumstance that the manner 
in which the "New Revelation" is delivered is 
1. A Process Contrary to Nature 
All right-thinking men will agree that mental 
health depends upon the unimpeded exercise of 
our will-power and of our intellectual faculties. 
The aim of all true education is to develop and 
cultivate these to the very utmost and to enable 
us to guard against anything in the least calcu- 
lated to interfere with them. We do not think 

[53] 



The New Black Magic 

much of the man characterized by a weak will 
and easily swayed by the ideas and feelings of 
others. The development of a strong personality 
is unthinkable wherever the latter is the case. 
Our very instincts warn us against the perils in- 
cidental to any invasion of our personality from 
without. This is most certainly true with respect 
to the ordinary conditions of life and our inter- 
course with our fellows — with the men and 
women regarding whose aim and character and 
disposition we are able to form some kind of 
judgment. But how much more is this the case 
with regard to agencies whom we cannot see, of 
whose nature and disposition we cannot form any 
adequate idea, and for the integrity of whose aim 
and purpose we have only their own statements. 
No man, thinking logically and correctly, would 
submit himself to any such invasion of his per- 
sonality, and the very aversion of the normal man 
to the mediumistic process proves the existence 
of the barriers and safeguards which nature has 
erected. The circumstance that, in spiritistic 
practices, these barriers have to be broken dow r n 
gradually, and in most instances, with disastrous 
consequences to the medium, is evidence that the 
process itself is against nature. 

Now it is an indubitable fact that such an in- 
vasion of the personality, attended by the weaken- 

[54 3 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

ing of the sense of responsibility, and of the 
power to exercise the will and the judgment, is 
the necessary and inevitable accompaniment of 
the practice of mediumship. So certain is this 
that even professed spiritists are constrained to 
admit it and to utter warnings. 

"It is this weakening of the sense of personal 
responsibility," writes Sir William Barrett, 5 
"that constitutes, in my opinion, the chief peril 
of Spiritualism. Hence your gates need to be 
guarded with jealous care; even the level-headed 
should walk warily, and the excitable and emo- 
tional should have nothing to do with it; for the 
fascination of the subject is like a candle to 
moths, it attracts and burns the silly, the credu- 
lous and the crazy." 

And with that naiveness and self-contradiction 
for which the scientific exponents of the new 
Christianity are famous, Sir Oliver Lodge 6 him- 
self writes: 

"Self-control is more important than any other 
form of control, and whoever possesses the power 
of receiving communications in any form should 
see to it that he remains master of the situation. 
To give up your own judgment and depend solely 
on adventitious aid is a grave blunder and may 

"On the Threshold of the Unseen. 
•Raymond Or Life After Death. P. 225. 

[551 



The New Black Magic 

in the long run have disastrous consequences. 
Moderation and common sense are required in 
those who try to utilize powers which neither 
they nor any fully understand and a dominating 
occupation in mundane affairs is a wholesome 
safeguard." 

But how this self-control and preservation of 
the judgment are to be exercised by persons in 
an unconscious or semi-conscious state, and with 
respect to unseen agencies whose nature and aim 
they cannot possibly determine, these men do 
not tell us. And yet they would have us be- 
lieve that a credible revelation can possibly be 
delivered to us by such a perilous and irrational 
method ! 

Sir Conan Doyle goes so far as to say that the 
gifts bestowed on some of the Apostles and 
spoken of by St. Paul in his First Epistle to the 
Corinthians 7 are identical with the phenomena 
of mediumship, and indeed boldly asserts that the 
early Church was "saturated with spiritualism." 
But can a more grossly dishonest interpretation 
of Holy Scripture be conceived? Can anybody 
imagine St. Paul or any one of the Apostles sit- 
ting en seance with a clairvoyant or writing 
medium ? St. Paul does not say that the various 
powers referred to are by operation of spirits but 

T Chapter XII, 11. 

[56] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

of the Spirit — this Spirit, according to the pre- 
ceding verses, being the Spirit of God. The 
powers displayed in modern mediumship are cer- 
tainly not gifts by which the Spirit God operates, 
but effects of a systematic development of a 
faculty by which created spirits can work certain 
marvels in imitation of those worked by the Spirit 
of God. 

But we have to recognize the further fact that 
2. The Systematic Practice of Mediumship 
Is Always Attended by Disastrous Con- 
sequences, Mental, Moral and Physical. 

This effect does not always manifest itself im- 
mediately to the medium and the percipient, for 
the simple reason already stated that the process 
is a gradual one and that nature's barriers are 
removed one by one. 

In the case of the mental phenomena, such as 
automatic writing, trance-speaking, etc., the 
steadily increasing degree of passivity, varying 
from a mere mind-impression to a state of com- 
plete unconsciousness, in the course of time com- 
pletely paralyzes the will of the medium and 
makes him the helpless instrument and victim of 
the spirit dominating him, who then infuses 
his own ideas into the mind. The process is so 
subtle that it is often barely recognized in its 
initial stages, and the fact itself only becomes 

[57] 



The New Black Magic 

apparent when the mischief is done and the 
spirit's work is completed. 

To produce the available evidence, illustrating 
and confirming the truth of this statement, would 
require the writing of a separate book. It has 
been my painful duty, for the past twenty years, 
to endeavor to bring relief to and save the victims 
of modern scientific spiritism, and the cases with 
which I have had to deal are practically identical 
in their character. I can best describe the process 
at work in the words of a well-known scientific 
experimenter, who has the courage of his opin- 
ions and who cannot be charged with preconcep- 
tion on account of his religious belief. He is a 
purely scientific student of the phenomena. Dr. 
H. Carrington writes: 8 

"I know this progressive development well. I 
have so many different accounts sent me from 
different sources that I know each step of the 
process perfectly. First, slow scrawls or 
scratches obtained with difficulty and after long 
waiting; then the formation of definite letters, 
then the more rapid flow of the handwriting with 
intelligent connection ; then personal remarks, an- 
swers, conversations, lies, impertinence; then the 
stage in which it seems hardly necessary for the 
subject to touch the board at all; then the board 

s The Problems of Psychical Research. P. 333. 
[58] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

is discarded altogether and the pencil is substi- 
tuted in its place. The writing now becomes still 
more personal, the subject believes that the hand 
writes, she comes to be dominated by it. Then, 
if the subject still continues, rapid, furiously 
rapid writing takes place; the desire to write is 
constantly present; pain develops at the base of 
the brain ; then the pencil is discarded and writing 
is performed with any object which is handy — a 
fork, a paperknife, etc., — or with the finger in 
the air; finally the subject seems to intuit the 
words before they are written out; this becomes 
more and more intense until distinct auditory hal- 
lucinations result; the patient listens to the in- 
ternal voices and follows and believes what they 
say; she loses sleep; insomnia sets in; a strange 
light is seen in her eyes; all sense of proportion 
is lost, the subject is completely wrapped up in 
the internal voices and pays but little attention to 
external affairs; she is completely dominated or 
obsessed by the internal reverie ; to all intents and 
purposes she has become insane. 

"I doubt not that many hundreds of persons 
become insane every year by reason of these ex- 
periments with the planchette board, as the pres- 
ent subject would have done had she not stopped 
her experimenting in time. . . . The way in 
which the board swore on occasions was extraor- 

[59] 



The New Black Magic 

dinary and on several occasions it called Mrs* 
C. and others names which they had never heard 
till they saw them spelled out on paper and are 
of such a nature that I cannot give them here." 
(p. 375 et seq.) 

The editor of one of our weekly publications 
quite recently sent me the names and addresses of 
three persons in one locality who had had to be 
confined to the asylum by reason of spiritistic 
practices, and respecting whom the attending 
physician stated that "the use of the ouija-board 
had brought about a state of dementia." 

I can, on the grounds of my long and intimate 
acquaintance with this aspect of the subject, con- 
firm the literal truth of this statement and can 
but add that I doubt very much whether the pro- 
tective barriers thus removed can ever be entirely 
replaced. The spirits are ready enough to come 
but they do not go away quite so readily. In all 
the cases which have come under my observation, 
the automatic process had proved a destructive 
one, the victim remaining subject to a recurrence 
of the invasion on the slightest provocation, and 
incessantly battling with the inclination to write. 
Where this impulse is systematically yielded to, 
as in the case of public automatic or inspirational 
mediumship, the invading spirit ultimately par- 
ages the normal thinking powers, dominates the 

[6o] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

will and the sensory organism, until the mental 
and moral powers of the subject decay and he 
becomes an imbecile. 

"I have," writes Sir Wm. Barrett, "observed 
the steady downward course of all mediums who 
sit regularly/' 

One of the last cases of this kind which came 
under my observation in England was that of an 
intelligent young girl, into whose hands some of 
these recent "scientific" books had fallen and who, 
unaware of the peril and in all good faith, had 
practiced automatic writing. The usual fatal de- 
velopment had taken place. She appealed to me 
when all other efforts to obtain relief had failed. 
I did all I could to save her but, unfortunately, 
only very partially succeeded. In two of her last 
letters addressed to me she wrote : 

1. "During writing I could not swear to being 
quite conscious, for the pencil moves rapidly and 
I lose the power of being able to stop it. Twice 
it came out in some peculiar language and, the 
last time, it was so disgusting that it was not fit 
to read and I was very violently sick after it. 
This makes me wonder if I am really conscious 
all the time. I have striven against it but to no 
avail. There come, at certain times, quick and 
violent jerkings of the hand and arm and then, 
as if by compulsion, I have to seize a pencil and 

[61] 



The New Black Magic 

a bit of paper. It cannot be sin now as I have no 
wish to do it. I also find that every action of my 
life is controlled by one dominant spirit. Often 
I sit and my astral forms itself into a most 
hideous personality which sits in the opposite cor- 
ner and grins and mocks me to distraction. I am 
sorry you know of even worse cases, though it is 
a little consolation." 

2. "I am sorry and ashamed to report that 
automatic writing has become habitual — not 
through my fault, as I have struggled and strug- 
gled against it. I find you are quite right — 
obscene is scarcely the word to emphasize the ter- 
rible nature of the revelations. It is, believe 
me, quite against my natural inclinations when 
normal; but I will not excuse myself. Suffice it 
to say that I am really unable to help it." 

Another correspondent writes : 

"On the advice of a well-known authority on 
Spiritualism the writer and his wife, who were 
both told that they were mediums, attempted 
automatic writing. Almost from the first it was 
successful, and some very remarkable letters have 
been received from this spirit and another. But 
I think it only right to add that the language used, 
though at times very intellectual and scientific, 
was of such a character that we were compelled 
to cease all communications with him. Spirit- 

[62] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

ism is, alas! too true; but our present re- 
searches have convinced us that it by no means 
bears the angelic character ascribed to it by 
spiritists." 

In Modern Mystics and Modern Magic, Mr. 
Lillie writes: 

"Over and over again Mr. Stainton Moses (the 
great writing-medium) has told me that his medi- 
umship passed through one very grave crisis in- 
deed. Evil spirits assailed him. His days were 
perturbation and his nights were terror. Every 
sense was assailed. The foulest stenches spread 
through his bedroom. He tried the Indian Yoga 
so far as to give up fresh meat and wine. This 
only made matters worse. To an earnest clergy- 
men all this created terrible doubts. Often and 
often Mr. Stainton Moses thought his guides 
devils from Hell." 

If experiences such as these, of which one does 
not often find records in the official accounts of 
psychical research, were brought to the knowl- 
edge of the public by our scientific exponents of 
spiritism, would any sane man, I wonder, se- 
riously consider the contention that, by means 
of so perilous a method a new Revelation is in 
process of delivery to the human race ? It seems 
to me that only a person who has himself fallen 
yictim to this method of operation, and whose 

[63] 



The New Black Magic 

judgment is unbalanced and disordered, can ad- 
vance such a claim. 

With respect to the physical or objective phe- 
nomena it is only necessary to state the ascer- 
tained facts of the case and to let these speak for 
themselves. They are so utterly and hopelessly 
destructive of the popular interpretation of the 
phenomena that spiritistic writers seldom refer 
to them now, and when they do, they plainly inti- 
mate that the best evidence in favor of the spirit- 
istic theory must not be sought for in that 
quarter. For the general public, however, the 
phenomenon of materialization has the greatest 
possible attraction and fascination and, in most 
circles, it is regarded as the one most to be de- 
sired and to be striven for. And the spirits 
themselves invariably encourage this desire and 
promise the phenomenon as a reward of strict 
obedience to instruction and of entire conformity 
to the conditions laid down by them. And as 
materialization, under good conditions, compels 
belief in the most skeptical mind, we cannot be 
surprised that physical mediumship is regarded 
as the summum bonum of all spiritistic practices. 

I pointed out, years ago, in my earliest writ- 
ings, that I was convinced that the spirits, in 
order to produce perceptible manifestations in 
the sense-world, withdrew from the physical 

[64] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

organism of the medium some kind of vital force 
or matter. In dark seances I had observed this 
subtle matter issuing from the body of the sensi- 
tive and I found traces of it on my earliest photo- 
graphs. It was a notion, moreover, entirely in 
keeping with assertions which I found in some of 
the older books on Occultism. They speak of a 
kind of spirit-vampirism which is in active oper- 
ation in these experiments and which, in its fully 
developed form, tends to endanger the very life 
of the medium. Science at that time, of course, 
dismissed any such statements as these with that 
contemptuous disregard with which it dismisses 
everything that does not bear the conventional 
scientific impress, but which is in reality the re- 
sult of ignorance. That same science has now 
been compelled, not merely to admit the fact it- 
self, but to put it on a true scientific basis. Ex- 
periments, carried on in private laboratories, 
under strict test conditions, and with the aid of 
photography and of scientific instruments, have 
established the existence of this force or fluid or 
matter beyond all possibility of doubt, and have 
shown clearly what the method is by which these 
spirits act and how they manage to produce such 
astounding phenomena. 

This life-force or fluid or plasm as some ex- 
perimenters term it (its nature and constituents 

[65] 



The New Black Magic 

being at present unknown) is withdrawn from 
the organism when the medium has passed into a 
deep state of trance, and when it has become 
sufficiently separated, the spirits manipulate it in 
such a way that they are able, by its means, to 
produce all the desired effects — from the moving 
of a planchette or a chair or a table, to the shap- 
ing of a human face or form. 

But this power, so far from being a gift, is the 
result of a peculiar morbid condition of the body 
which can only be achieved by a long and patient 
process of development and by a rigid obedience 
to all the rules laid down by the spirits. It is 
admitted by the latter that, the process being a 
complex and difficult one, all those present must 
be willing to aid the medium by yielding some of 
their own vitality for the success of the experi- 
ment. 

That such an experiment would involve perils 
to the medium and the experimenters must be 
obvious to the least reflecting mind. How very 
great these perils are can only be appreciated by 
those who have witnessed the phenomenon and 
who have observed the physical and mental con- 
dition of the medium when recovering from the 
trance state. Yet our modern exponents of 
spiritism, knowing full well how these facts 
must damage their cause and compel an in- 

[66] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

terpretation of' the phenomena very different 
from that which they advance, scarcely ever refer 
to it. We get the facts only from those experi- 
menters who work on true scientific lines and 
who have, as yet, no interpretation of the phe- 
nomena to offer. 

But I would present the facts and let these 
speak for themselves. Mr. Stainton Moses him- 
self describes his condition during the process of 
writing 9 as follows: 

"The hand tingled and the arm throbbed and 
I was conscious of waves of force surging 
through me. When the message was done I was 
prostrate with exhaustion and suffered from a 
violent headache at the base of the brain. Ask- 
ing the cause, the spirits (the highly intellectual 
Imperator group) replied: Headache was due to 
the intensity of the power and the rapidity with 
which it was withdrawn from you. You could 
not write on such a subject without displaying 
eagerness, for it is of the most vital concern to 
those to whom we are sent." 

A famous Italian medium makes the following 
statement : 

"I have been asked many times for my own 

'This writing being in his case of a "direct" character (without 
use of board or pencil held) partakes of the character of a 
physical phenomenon. 

[6 7 ] 



The New Black Magic 

explanation, but I have none. I only know that 
I can feel the force; that it seems to flow out of 
me and that I obtain it in part from others. When 
the chain of hands is broken I can do nothing. 
Strong men give me added power. The move- 
ment of objects correspond to the movements of 
my body and to the director of my will before I 
have sunk into a deep sleep. After that, as I said, 
I know nothing." 

Dr. Hereward Carrington, who was one of 
the scientific committee investigating the phe- 
nomenon of materialization in Italy, some years 
ago, reported as follows : 

"During the experiments in Milan it was found 
that the medium lost weight in a manner that 
could in no way be accounted for. The medium 
and the chair in which she was sitting were placed 
upon the scales and their combined weight was 
carefully measured. She was then watched care- 
fully to see that she threw nothing away and also 
to see that she derived no support from the sur- 
rounding surfaces — the floor, etc. Nevertheless, 
in the course of from twelve to twenty seconds, 
she lost about seventeen and half pounds of 
weight. At the fifth sitting a similar reduction 
was observed under conditions that the investi- 
gating committee considered perfect." 

The late Professor Lombroso, who carried out 
[68] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

a series of scientific experiments, under the strict- 
est test conditions, observed the same reduction 
of weight and stated that : 

"Before the seance, she (the medium) weighed 
176 pounds. With the appearance of a phantasm 
this weight diminished to 83 and afterwards to 
54 pounds. And the phantasm weighed the dif- 
ference." 

Sir Wm. Crookes, the eminent chemist, and one 
of the earliest investigators of the phenomena of 
spiritism, makes a statement to the following 
effect : 

"After witnessing the painful state of nervous 
and bodily prostration in which some of these 
experiments had left Mr. Home — after seeing 
him lying in almost fainting condition, pale and 
speechless, on the floor — I could scarcely doubt 
that the evolution of psychic force is accompanied 
by a corresponding drain on vital force." 

But incontrovertible evidence of more recent 
date, both as to the existence of the "psychic 
plasm" and of the effect of its withdrawal from 
the organism of the medium, is now available. 
For a period of four years — -from 1910 to 1914 — 
Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing, a famous Munich 
physician, member of many learned societies and 
author of many standard treatises on criminal 
psychology and allied subjects, has carried on an 

[69] 



The New Black Magic 

experimental investigation of the phenomenon 
of materialization under conditions in which the 
most skeptical and exacting mind can scarcely 
hope to discover a flaw. In view of the fact that 
Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing has had an acquain- 
tance with the intricacies of mediumship extend- 
ing over a period of 25 years, he must be regarded 
as well qualified to impose conditions which 
would constitute effectual safeguards against the 
very possibility of deception and hallucination. 
The Doctor, moreover, invited to this long series 
of experiments various persons of high standing, 
in whose judgment and powers of observation he 
had confidence. Amongst these sitters were 
medical, scientific and literary men and the well- 
known Dr. Richet, Professor of Physiology in 
the University of Paris. 

The medium with whom he experimented re- 
mained to the end at the Doctor's exclusive dis- 
posal. She lived as a member of the family at 
the house at which the greater number of the 
seances were held and was therefore under con- 
stant and watchful observation. It subsequently 
became known that, at the instigation of persons 
hostile to the investigators, her movements out- 
side the house, too, had been shadowed by detec- 
tives for a period of eight months. 

In the course of his experiments, Dr. Von 
[70] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

Schrenck-Notzing discovered that by covering an 
electric light of 16-candle power with thin red 
material, it was possible to obtain the phenomena 
in fairly good light and to eliminate those well- 
known unsatisfactory elements which are known 
to attend the holding of dark seances. 

Before each sitting the medium was subjected 
to a rigid physical examination at the hands of 
experts, and she had to exchange her ordinary 
dress for one provided and prepared for the pur- 
pose by the experimenters. The initial state of 
trance was then induced by means of hypnotism. 

In connection with some of these experiments 
the Doctor employed no less than nine cameras, 
thus obtaining excellent photographs of the phe- 
nomenon in its progressive stages of evolution, 
enabling him to test and verify the accuracy 
of his personal observations. The plates on 
which these impressions were obtained were 
throughout manipulated by himself and were 
finally developed in his presence. Stereoscopic 
pictures, too, were obtained. 

Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing's report shows his 
final conclusions to be in agreement with those of 
the earlier scientific experimenters. He tells us 
that he watched and photographed the issue of 
the mysterious life-plasm from the body of the 
medium, the formation of abnormal arms and 

[7i] 



The New Black Magic 

hands and faces, and that he was even able to do 
what, so far as I know, nobody has ever done 
before him — to secure a portion of the mysterious 
substance and to submit it to microscopic exam- 
ination. 

The result of this examination would seem to 
show that physical science has yet many problems 
to solve in connection with these extraordinary 
phenomena. 

In my opinion the most interesting and evi- 
dently most conclusive of these psychic photo- 
graphs are not those on which the fully material- 
ized spirit-form is exhibited, but those which 
present various heads and faces and forms in the 
process of evolution and therefore imperfect and 
incomplete, the plate often having been exposed 
before the full degree of development had been 
attained. It is difficult to imagine how the evi- 
dence for the existence and objective reality of 
the plasm, and of the phenomenon of spirit-mate- 
rialization by its means, could ever be made more 
perfect or the conditions of observation more 
rigid and conclusive. 

But what is of surpassing interest to the seri- 
ous student of the subject in this connection is 
Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing's account of the effects 
of these experiments on the physical and mental 
organism Of the medium, and on this point the 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

Doctor does not leave us in any doubt ; his state- 
ments are clear and emphatic, and they have 
about them that fearlessness which is the char- 
acteristic of all true science. 

He writes as an unprejudiced investigator 
whose sole aim and purpose is to record facts, 
patiently and accurately observed and studied, 
and who has no particular theory or interpreta- 
tion to defend or to establish. 

He tells us that, "while the phenomena were in 
progress, the medium groaned and trembled and 
that when she was awakened after a protracted 
sitting, she was so seriously exhausted that she 
had to be brought to bed." On one occasion, the 
Doctor reports, "her loss of blood was consider- 
able, she was tired and feverish, spoke with a 
hoarse voice and coughed a great deal." At the 
conclusion of another seance she fell from one 
fainting fit into another, from which she could 
only be awakened by the use of alcoholic stimu- 
lants, and these fainting fits recurred three times 
in the night. When the Doctor visited her the 
next morning she was still in a dream-like state, 
complained of pains in her breast and vomited 
quite a wine-glassful of blood. As a rule, the 
Doctor tells us, it took the medium two days to 
recover from the nervous prostration resulting 
from these sittings. 

[73] 



The New Black Magic 

To what kinds of abuse the unfortunate victims 
of a misguided scientific curiosity are apt to be 
exposed is apparent from an incident recorded in 
this report. On one occasion, Dr. Von Schrenck- 
Notzing tells us, while an ordinary manifestation 
was in progress there appeared suddenly a power- 
ful and well-developed man's forearm with a 
hand attached, which brutally seized hold of the 
young woman and threw her with force into an 
easy chair. She screamed and was so dreadfully 
frightened and excited that the seance had to be 
discontinued and it took her several weeks to re- 
cover from the shock which her nervous system 
had sustained. 

To these statements I would add that the fit- 
like shaking and trembling of the medium, as the 
vital energy is being withdrawn, is a sight repul- 
sive in the extreme, and is an evidence that a 
process is at work which is against nature and 
which is a violent removal of the barriers which 
nature has erected. The depletion of the organ- 
ism, resulting in utter physical exhaustion, neces- 
sarily leaves the medium defenseless and an easy 
prey to the spirit invading it. The entire process, 
therefore, is a disastrous and destructive one, as 
another student of the subject remarks: a rob- 
bery, a deprivation, a retrogression, a deteriora- 
tion. It results ultimately in a progressive loss of 

[74] 



The Evidence of Fact and Experience 

memory, in inability to fix the mind or the will 
consistently on any subject, in a steadily increas- 
ing loss of self-control and moral balance, and 
in that natural tendency to animalism which is so 
well known a characteristic of mediumship. 

I consider this aspect of the subject of such 
vital importance, and bearing so strongly upon 
the interpretation of the phenomena that, at the 
risk of being tedious, I have quoted somewhat 
fully from recognized and responsible scientific 
authorities. 

It is a suggestive circumstance that when Sir 
Conan Doyle speaks of the abnormal signs ac- 
companying the delivery of the new doctrines 
from the beyond, he makes no reference at all to 
those here described. But from statements such 
as these, which certainly do not emanate from 
writers who have a particular religious position 
or creed to defend, it must surely be evident that 
the mediumistic process is an inevitably perilous 
and therefore an irrational and immoral one. 
And yet, we are asked to believe, that by such a 
process a New Revelation is being given to the 
world! 



[75] 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE SCIENCE 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE SCIENCE 

It is a matter for congratulation that we have 
amongst our modern scientific investigators of 
psychical phenomena a number of men who, 
although they are thoroughly convinced of the 
reality and spirit-origin of the phenomena, never- 
theless strongly repudiate the conventional inter- 
pretation given of them and emphatically point 
out the objections which true reflection and a con- 
sideration of all the facts of the case must neces- 
sarily raise against them. 

Their warnings and reservations will be seen 
to be indications of that truly scientific temper of 
mind which examines a problem from every con- 
ceivable point of view and which does not rashly 
jump to conclusions on the ground of mere sur- 
face evidence. It will be found, too, that the ma- 
jority of these men have, in their study of the 
phenomena, remained outside observers of them, 
and have not themselves practiced mediumship in 
any definite form. They have thus been able to 
escape that subtle invasion of the mind by the 
operating spirits which we now know to attend 
all mediumistic practices, and which is so greatly 
calculated to affect and to unbalance the judg- 

[■79] 



The New Black Magic 

ment. Some of them, too, are no doubt men of 
such forceful and positive mental constitution 
that, in spite of their frequent assistance as 
psychical experiments, they have not fallen vic- 
tims to this well-known spirit-domination. It is 
to such men alone that we can look for accurate 
and reliable information on this complex and 
thorny subject. It cannot be too frequently 
pointed out that mediumistic practices are calcu- 
lated to enslave and pervert the judgment of even 
the most vigorous intellect, and that the subtle 
influences exercised by these spirits upon the 
habitually passive mind, account to a large extent 
for the wholly illogical and grotesque interpreta- 
tions of the phenomena which some experi- 
menters are placing before the public to-day. At 
a seance held in London not so very long ago, at 
which a spirit had been masquerading as a de- 
ceased friend of the family, but had finally been 
driven to admit that he had never inhabited a 
human body, the assertion was made that it was 
contrary to the aims of the spirits to allow scien- 
tific men to become convinced of the existence of 
evil spirits. "They might draw certain inevitable 
inferences," the spirit declared, "and become 
Christians, thus defeating our aims." Does this 
explain, one wonders, the vague answers to ques- 
tions, the many tricks and contradictions which 

[80] 



The Evidence of True Science 

cause the modern experimenter to be forever 
learning" yet never to be coming to a knowledge 
of the truth, but meanwhile to be keeping the door 
of communication widely open? 

My long and exhaustive study of this aspect 
of the subject has thoroughly convinced me that 
the victims of these spirit-operations are seldom 
fully aware of what is going on. They are apt to 
attribute their impressions to a sort of progres- 
sive enlightenment of the mind due to a knowl- 
edge obtained from a study of the phenomena, 
while, in reality, they are due to the circumstance 
that the mind and, of course, the judgment are all 
the while being tampered with by the very intelli- 
gences whose nature they are investigating, but. 
who have made themselves the real masters of 
the situation in the process. It is thus that sci- 
ence is being led by the nose and that a credulous 
world is being imposed upon. 

On page 57 I have given an account of the 
now available and reliable testimony as to the 
effects — mental, moral and physical — of all forms 
of mediumships, and the rightly thinking man can 
scarcely fail to recognize that this is in itself 
sufficient to demolish the claim that by such peril- 
ous means a just and all-wise God is imparting 
new and important religious truths to mankind. 
Such an assumption would, beyond doubt, lessen 

[81] 



The New Black Magic 

our reverence for God and be offensive to our 
reason. But, as I know full well by what subtle 
feats of mental gymnastics the defenders of 
spiritism evade this difficulty and make light of it, 
I propose to go still more fully into the matter 
and to show what true science has to say when 
the problem is regarded from yet another point 
of view. 

All serious students of psychical phenomena 
are fully aware that the real crux of the spiritist 
to-day is the question of identity — the necessity of 
validly establishing the fact that the communicat- 
ing spirit is really the individual he claims to be 
— a person once known under such or such a 
name in this world. Sir Oliver Lodge admits 
that "the question of identity is a fundamental 
one and that the controlling spirit proves his 
identity mainly by the reproduction, in speech or 
writing, of facts which belong to his memory and 
not to the automatist" (medium). 

Now, in weighing this statement in the light 
of the knowledge which we possess to-day, we 
have first of all to realize the fact that impersona- 
tion of the dead by deceiving spirits is a well- 
known frequent and admitted phenomenon in con- 
nection with spirit-manifestations. There are in- 
stances on record in which these cunning and 
crafty beings have maintained the deception for 

[82] 



The Evidence of True Science 

months and even years ; but have finally been com- 
pelled to admit and confess the deception. In the 
case of even the most accredited mediums, such as 
Mrs. Piper, reserved for exclusive use by the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research, such impersonations 
were constantly taking place and had to be 
allowed for. 

Some experimenters are strangely reticent in 
emphasizing the significance of these impersona- 
tions and their manifest bearing upon the inter- 
pretation of the phenomena, while the cool- 
headed observer who has no pet theory to de- 
fend, never ceases to draw attention to it. In 
speaking of his experiments with Mrs. Piper, Dr. 
H. Carrington reports to the Society for Psy- 
chical Research: 

"I gained the distinct impression throughout 
the sittings that instead of the spirits of the per- 
sonages who claimed to be present, I was dealing 
with an exceedingly sly, cunning, tricky and de- 
ceitful intelligence, which threw out chance re- 
marks, fishing guesses, and shrewd inferences, 
leaving the sitter to pick these up and elaborate 
them if he would. If anything could make me 
believe in the doctrine of evil and lying spirits it 
would be the sittings with Mrs. Piper. I do not 
for one moment implicate the normal Mrs. Piper 
in this criticism." 

[83] 



The New Black Magic 

Those more intimately acquainted with psy- 
chical literature are familiar with the spirit who 
called himself Dr. Phinuit and who, for many 
years, masqueraded as a deceased Marseillais 
physician through the mediumship of Mrs. Piper. 
Few doubted the fact that it was an intelligence 
independent of and apart from Mrs. Piper, — no 
secondary personality — since he possessed knowl- 
edge entirely outside the reach of Mrs. Piper's 
mind. But respecting the identity of this being 
with a deceased French physician, Mr. Leaf, of 
the Society, wrote: 

"His own word does not, in view of his moral 
standard, apart from other considerations, carry 
even the presumption of veracity — nor has a 
single one of the numerous statements he had 
made as to his life on earth proved capable of 
verification. On the other side, his complete 
ignorance of French is a positive ground for dis- 
believing him and one which he has never been 
able to explain." 10 

I have, in my various books, given striking in- 
tances of this kind of spirit-deception which have 
come under my personal observation in the course 
of my researches and I will not increase the bulk 
of this book by quoting them here. I will but add 
that these impersonations are regarded by the 

10 Proceedings of the Society. Vol. VI, P. 560. 
[84] 



The Evidence of True Science 

more mentally robust among psychical re- 
searchers in so serious a light that Dr. L. P. 
Jacks, LL.D., D.D., President of the Society for 
Psychical Research in 1917 and Editor of the 
Hibbert Journal, was constrained to make the 
following reservation in his Presidential Ad- 
dress : 

"Take the question of imposture. Mediums 
are not the only impostors. How about the com- 
municators? Are they masquerading? You can 
have no absolute proof that there is no imposture 
on the other side. I think that the whole meaning 
of personal identity needs to be very carefully 
thought out and considered before we begin to 
produce evidence in favor of personal identity." 

In the writings of Sir Conan Doyle himself 
we come upon so singular an admission as this: 

"Guessing on the part of the controlled there 
might be — there sometimes was — and occasion- 
ally there were direct impersonations ; but that is 
part of what we might expect — at any rate it is 
part of what we got." But if this be so, what be- 
comes of the "New Revelation" of which these 
masqueraders claim to be the transmitters? 

Now these remarkable and admitted instances 
of spirit-imposture lead to two necessary and in- 
evitable inferences. 

1. They demonstrate the fact that these spirits 
[85] 



Xhe New Black Magic 

have access, under certain conditions, to a great 
deal of information respecting the characters and 
lives of deceased personalities. 

2. They make it abundantly manifest that we 
can never, in view of this circumstance, be certain 
that the spirit communicating is what it claims 
to be and that its disclosures are of any value. 

Mr. M. Maeterlinck, in the effort to discover the 
source of the information possessed by the spir- 
its, has conceived the notion of a kind of "cosmic 
mental storehouse" in which the records of all 
human lives are preserved and upon which spirits, 
getting in touch with the right kind of vibrations, 
may be able to draw for the purpose of these im- 
personations. 

"We are compelled to recognize," he writes, 
"that there must exist somewhere in this world 
or in others a spot in which everything is known, 
in which everything is possible, to which 
everything goes, from which everything comes, 
which belongs to all, to which all have 
access, but of which the long- forgotten roads 
must be learned again by our stumbling feet." 11 

My own experiments and observations led me, 
years ago, to the conclusion that, whatever may 
be said of Maeterlinck's cosmic storehouse, the 
main sources of information drawn upon by the 

u The Unknown Guest. P. 82. 
[86] 



The Evidence of True Science 

spirits are the subconscious minds of the medium 
and of the sitters. Recent psychological research 
has definitely established the fact that "the sub- 
conscious mind of man is a kind of vast store- 
house wherein are preserved, seemingly without 
time limit and in the most perfect detail, memory 
images of everything we have seen, heard or 
otherwise experienced through our sense organs. 
It is also a kind of workshop for the facile ma- 
nipulation of ideas including even the elaboration 
of complicated trains of thoughts." 12 

Or, as Dr. Morton Prince, another psycholo- 
gist, puts it: 

"We should not overlook the fact that among 
mental experiences are those of the inner as well 
as of the outer life. To the former belong the 
hopes and aspirations, the regrets, the fears, the 
doubts, the self -communings and wrestlings with 
self, the wishes, the loves, the hates, all that we 
are not willing to give to the outer world and all 
that we would forget and would strive not to 
admit to ourselves. All this inner life belongs 
to our experience and is subject to the same law 
of conservation." 13 

But experiment has also established the in- 
dubitable fact that, in the passive state, when the 

"Psychology and Parenthood, by H. Addington Bruce. 
"The Unconscious. P. 85. 

[8 7 ] 



The New Black Magic 

conscious normal activities of the working mind 
are suspended, this subconscious storehouse is 
thrown open and its contents become accessible 
to spirit-intelligences. And the extent to which 
it can then be drawn upon by them and its con- 
tents manipulated, depends upon the degree of 
passivity attained and upon the experience of the 
particular invading intelligence. 

With these facts clearly before the mind the 
thoughtful reader will have no difficulty in real- 
izing the vast possibilities which are at the serv- 
ice of these crafty intelligences and to what an 
extent the investigator can be deceived and 
tricked. In some instances the manipulation of 
these mind-images or phantasms is so ingenious 
that the most critical observers are completely 
taken in, and it is only when the most searching 
tests are applied and every statement made is 
rigidly scrutinized, that the trick is discovered 
and the imposition is exposed. 

In this respect, too, however, nature would 
seem to have erected certain barriers and to 
have provided for the venturesome student of 
the subject certain safeguards which are to be 
found in the circumstance that there are limi- 
tations to the powers of these spirits. They can 
do many wonderful things, but they cannot do 
everything and the cloven hoof can always be 

[88] 



The Evidence of True Science 

detected if one remains on the alert and preserves 
a rigidly critical attitude of mind. I dis- 
covered this many years ago and my own conclu- 
sions were confirmed by those of the late Pro- 
fessor Wm. James, of Harvard, which he ex- 
pressed to me in the course of a most interesting 
conversation which I had with him a year or so 
before his death. "It seems to me," he said, 
"that these strange spirit-beings are under some 
kind of inhibition and that, wonderful though 
their powers are, they are certainly limited." 
This limitation or inhibition consists in the cir- 
cumstance that they cannot always read and in- 
terpret these mind-images accurately and that, 
in their manipulation of them, they are apt to 
make disastrous mistakes. They will here or 
there draw a wholly mistaken and impossible in- 
ference from a clearly discerned fact or inci- 
dent, or they will misread or misplace the phan- 
tasm — attributing an event read in the mind- 
record to one life while in reality it belongs to 
another. I will give two actual occurrences in 
illustration of the truth of this statement. 

When I was engaged, years ago, in a series of 
experiments carried on in the family circle and 
without the employment of a public medium, a 
being manifested at our seances who claimed to 
be the spirit of a person whom I had known inti- 

[8 9 ] 



The New Black Magic 

mately in life. The accompanying phenomena 
could leave no possible doubt that it was the case 
of an individuality wholly independent of and 
apart from the young lady acting as a medium. 
He referred to events and circumstances which 
could not by any chance be known to her and 
once or twice to matters of which I too could 
have no knowledge. He came to us night after 
night, each time bringing proofs of his identity 
of his own devising, and these were, in various 
respects, so startling and convincing that the most 
skeptical members of the circle became con- 
vinced of his identity. In fact they became irri- 
tated at my own mental attitude which was that 
of patient scrutiny and observation. For some 
reason which I could not explain myself I was 
not convinced and again and again demanded 
fresh proofs of identity. One never-to-be-forgot- 
ten night I caught him in a manifest misstate- 
ment the bearing of which I alone could appre- 
ciate. It related to an event which could not pos- 
sibly have happened in his life. In reply to fur- 
ther carefully constructed questions, the truth of 
the statement made was insisted upon, and the 
statement itself still more fully elaborated. 
When I felt sure that the spirit could no longer 
evade his statements or, by any of the well- 
known tricks, attempt a plausible explanation, I 

[90] 



The Evidence of True Science 

pointed out the manifest falsehood of the state- 
ment, and unexpectedly charged him to tell me, 
in God's name, whether he was in reality the 
spirit of my deceased friend. My question was 
followed by an ominous silence and, upon being 
repeated, yielded an emphatic No! — a reply 
which, I need not say, left all the circle gasping. 
Upon my promise not to send him away and 
cease the inquiry he declared his willingness to 
tell us how he had effected so marvelous an im- 
personation. "I obtained all the needed informa- 
tion/' he declared, "from your own silly thought- 
boxes. You sit there like a set of fools, in a 
passive state of mind, by zvhich I am enabled to 
read your minds as you read your New Testa- 
ment." 

It was this remarkable occurrence which put 
me on the right track in my search for the main 
sources from which these spirits draw their in- 
formation, although it must be admitted that the 
subconscious minds of the sitters could not, in 
this case, be the sole and only source of infor- 
mation. 

When I landed in New York, a few years ago, 
I was invited to an interview with the late Dr. 
Funk, of the publishing firm of Funk & Wagnalls. 
He had read my books and was impressed with 
the evidence which I had presented, but, as a 

[9i3 



The New Black Magic 

confirmed spiritualist, he made light of my warn- 
ings and reservations and thought, no doubt, that 
they were largely due to my religious beliefs and 
convictions. Still it was evident to me that he, 
too, had his misgivings. He maintained, how- 
ever, that he had established the identity of his 
deceased wife to his entire satisfaction. She 
communicated with him, he told me, through all 
the mediums he visited, proved her identity by 
certain signs agreed upon, and spoke intimately 
of the most private affairs of her supposed past 
earth-life. Dr. Funk and I parted excellent 
friends who agreed to differ. A year or so later, 
on my return to New York, I rang up my friend. 
He expressed his great delight at the opportunity 
of meeting me again, and begged me to visit him 
at once as he had a great deal to tell me. I found 
him in a state of great depression, quite ready 
now, however, to consider my view of the matter. 
His story was as follows : He had visited a me- 
dium who could not possibly know him, and who 
had most certainly never seen him before. His 
spirit-wife had communicated at once and had 
given the usual sign of identification, continuing 
a conversation which had been broken off else- 
where. In the course of this conversation she had 
had occasion to refer to her death, but in a man- 
ner which startled Dr. Funk, and, for the first 

[92] 



The Evidence of True Science 

time, aroused his suspicion. He inquired cau- 
tiously: "Tell me again under what circumstances 
did you leave your body." She replied, "Why this 
question ? You surely know" ; and she then pro- 
ceeded to describe what she claimed to be the 
manner of her death, but what in reality corre- 
sponded to that of his deceased mother, his wife 
having died in an entirely different manner and 
from quite a different complaint. Here too mani- 
festly the masquerading spirit had "tapped" the 
subconscious mind of poor Dr. Funk but had, 
in the manipulation of the phantasm secured, 
made the most startling mistake. 

So far as the evidence obtainable from spirit- 
photography is concerned, we have it on the high 
authority of the late Mr. Traill Taylor, for years 
president of the British Royal Photographical 
Society, that "psychic pictures" can be obtained 
under the strictest test conditions. Mr. Taylor 
gave to the Society an interesting account of his 
own experiments in which he detailed the method 
of operation adopted and the precautions taken 
by him. I have myself obtained such pictures 
and have given illustrations of the safeguards 
employed in my book, "The Dangers of Spirit- 
ualism." But Mr. Taylor agrees with me that 
such pictures are quite worthless as aids to es- 
tablish spirit-identity. He calls them thought— 

[93] 



The New Black Magic 

or mind— or memory — pictures or projections, 
and traces them back to the sub-conscious mind 
of the medium or of the experimenter. 

He states, in confirmation of the correctness 
of this view, that pictures have been obtained of 
the conventional angels with wings, as the ordi- 
nary mind has been led to imagine them. 

It is further confirmed by the circumstance 
that on some of these pictures there appear, with 
the spirit-form of their departed owners, de- 
ceased pet dogs and cats and parrots, for whom a 
continued existence is claimed in the other world, 
but which are manifestly images drawn from the 
memories of the medium or of the sitters and 
manipulated by the spirits. 

Striking evidence in support of this contention 
is given in the great work of the German physi- 
cian already referred to, in which he presents us 
with a detailed and illustrated account of his ex- 
periments extending over a period of four years. 

"Spirit-photographs" were obtained by him 
which, upon examination, were found to be slight- 
ly modified presentations of pictures which the 
medium must have seen and which had certainly 
appeared in a popular French newspaper. 

Some years ago the deceased British Cardinals 
were very much in evidence in London seance- 
rooms. The late Cardinal Newman especially 

[94] 



The Evidence of True Science 

was believed to appear regularly at a house well 
known to me and I have seen several post-mortem 
photographs of him. But I found that they all 
differed very considerably and that this difference 
could be traced back to the image of the late Car- 
dinal which the individual observer had in his 
mind, or to a published photograph of him which 
he had seen. 

We have, furthermore, photographs on which 
the materialized spirit appears as he existed at 
various ages in his physical body, in one case as 
a child or youth, in another as a grown-up per- 
son, the presentation evidently corresponding 
with the peculiar mind-image which the experi- 
menter had retained of the deceased. 

I have in my possession a photograph obtained 
in a city which I had never visited before and 
on which there appears by my side a fairly good 
picture of a deceased member of my family ; but, 
alas ! for Sir Conan Doyle and his theories, there 
is on the same photograph also the image of a 
person well known to me who is still living, but 
not as she is now, an elderly lady, but as I knew 
her years ago and as I best remember her — a 
young married woman. Proof positive this, 
surely, that these images are not photographs of 
the living dead as they now exist in their new 
spirit-bodies, but materialized phantasms taken 

[95] 



The New Black Magic 

from the subconscious memories of surviving 
relatives and friends. The masquerading spirits 
clearly cannot always distinguish the mental 
phantasms of the dead from those of the living, 
and it is here where the critical and experienced 
investigator gets on the track of the deception. 
It will be seen from these occurrences alone 
what is possible in this direction and how utterly 
worthless all this material is as evidence of the 
fact and nature of the new spirit-body or of 
spirit-identity. But, as I have said before, it is 
practically demonstrated that the passive sub- 
conscious mind is not the only source from which 
these spirits draw that information which en- 
ables them to pose so successfully as the spirits 
of the dead. I am convinced that any fact or 
incident or human characteristic which has in 
any wise become extant — either by way of writ- 
ing, or verbal expression, or photography, or 
indeed by any outward sign or manifestation — 
is accessible to spirit-intelligence and can, under 
certain conditions, be made to serve the end in 
view. Indeed, so well is this recognized by 
serious students of the subject that they admit 
that we know today of nothing that could estab- 
lish the identity of a communicating spirit. It 
is seen that if such identity is ever to be estab- 
lished, it is for the spirits to furnish the evidence 

[96] 



The Evidence of True Science 

in a form and by a method of their own devising 
and which can leave no doubt in any mind. 

"Do they" (the spirits) "not yet know," writes 
Mr. Maeterlinck, 14 "that the sign which will prove 
to us that they survive is to be found not with us 
but with them, on the other side of the grave? 
Why do they come back with empty hands and 
empty words? Is that what one finds when one 
is steeped in infinity . . . ?" 

"All things considered, as in other attempts 
and notably those of the famous medium Stainton 
Moses, there is the same characteristic inability 
to bring us the veriest particle of truth or knowl- 
edge of which no vestige could be found in a liv- 
ing brain or in a book written on this earth. And 
yet it is inconceivable that there should not some- 
where exist a knowledge that is not ours and 
truths other than those which we possess here 
below." 

"The spirit Grocyn, for instance (communi- 
cating through Stainton Moses), furnished cer- 
tain information about Erasmus which was at 
first thought to have been gathered in the 
other world, but which was subsequently dis- 
covered in forgotten but nevertheless accessible 
books." 

On one occasion Mr. Stainton Moses received a 

u Fortnightly Review, Sept.-Oct., 1913. 

[97] 



The New Black Magic 

series of messages from musical composers, giv- 
ing the principal data of their respective lives as 
they may be found in every biographical diction- 
ary, with hardly anything more. Their peculiar 
nature excited his surprise and, on inquiry, he was 
informed by his guides, "that these were in fact 
messages from the spirits in question, but that 
they refreshed the memory of their earthly lives 
by consulting printed sources of information." 
In commenting upon this incident the late Mr. 
F. W. H. Myers wrote: "It is obvious that this 
is to drop the supposed proofs of identity alto- 
gether. If any given spirit can consult his own 
printed life, so also presumably can other spirits, 
and so perhaps can the still incarnate spirit of 
the automatist himself. In one of his more re- 
cent works 15 the spiritist Professor Sir Wm. 
Barrett naively remarks : 

"If we had no other evidence than automatic 
writing (the chief means of delivery of the "New 
Revelation," according to Sir Conan Doyle) we 
might conclude that the manufacture of puzzles 
and enigmas is the sole faculty and employment 
of discarnate spirits." 

There are many forms of mediumship, too, in 
which extraneous spirit-action need not be as- 
sumed, and where telepathy may conceivably ex- 

10 Psychical Research. P. 245. 

[98] 



The Evidence of True Science 

plain the phenomenon. It is evident from cases 
on record that we are here, too, confronted by 
vast possibilities, not only on the part of the sub- 
conscious mind-activities of the medium, but also 
on that of the spirit-operators. But they also 
show us to what an infinite amount of self-decep- 
tion and misinterpretation these phenomena are 
liable. 

In a recently published book 16 the following 
very interesting and suggestive incident is re- 
corded: A lady, Miss A., on her way to a clair- 
voyant medium, called on Mrs. B., whose mind at 
the time was very much occupied with some im- 
portant matter, of which, however, she made no 
mention to her visitor. Miss A.'s seance was so 
unsuccessful that, on her way home, she again 
called on Mrs. B. to tell her of her disappoint- 
ment. Mrs. B., on asking for particulars, found 
to her amazement that, while all the visions given 
by the clairvoyant medium had absolutely no 
meaning for Miss A., they had unmistakable ref- 
erence to the matter occupying her (Mrs. B/s) 
mind. The visions had, moreover, been ushered 
in by a Chinaman in gorgeous apparel, and Mrs. 
B. had that morning, on passing the Chinese Em- 
bassy, observed a Chinaman, gorgeously arrayed, 
coming down the steps. Does not an incident of 

16 Immortality. 

[99l 



The New Black Magic 

this kind throw a vast amount of light on the 
nature and origin of these phenomena? 

Now with these well-established and incontro- 
vertible facts before the mind, we shall be in a 
position to rightly estimate the value of the evi- 
dence adduced by Lodge and Doyle in favor of 
spirit-identity. It will be seen at a glance that 
it is wholly and utterly worthless. 

Let us first of all take the case of Miss Julia 
Ames, "who told Mr. Stead things in her own 
earth-life of which she could not have had cog- 
nizance," but which were shown "when tested 
to be true." 

There is, in the first place, the more than prob- 
ability that many of these things, if not all of 
them, were really embedded in Mr. Stead's sub- 
conscious mind but wholly forgotten by him. 
(Miss Ames was a personal friend of Mr. Stead 
for many years.) In their reproduction, there- 
fore, they would appear to Mr. Stead's normal 
mind as new matter. 

But, in the second place, the very circumstance 
that the truth of the matter produced could be 
tested by inquiry is evidence that it was in some 
form extant, i.e., contained in some book, or rec- 
ord, or article, or in some other living mind and 
was therefore accessible to spirit-intelligence. 
We have seen from the instances cited above that, 

[ ioo] 



The Evidence of True Science 

as such, it has no value whatever as a proof or 
evidence of identity. 

In the case of Raymond recorded by Sir Oliver 
Lodge, the same argument applies respecting "all 
sorts of details of his home life which his own 
relatives had to verify before they found them to 
be true." Such details could easily have been 
drawn from the subconscious mind of some 
member of the Lodge family or from some dis- 
tant mind, or from information extant in one 
form or another. I am persuaded that, years ago, 
Sir Oliver Lodge would himself have rejected 
any such disclosures and communications as re- 
liable evidence of spirit-identity. And I may add 
that very few of the well-informed members of 
the Psychical Research Society would be found 
to accept it today. 

As regards the photograph of his son, "no copy 
of which had reached England," the act of its 
impression on the sensitive plate was an occur- 
rence not only manifestly extant, but also known 
to a number of persons retaining this knowledge 
in their minds. For the spirits surrounding Sir 
Oliver Lodge, who was constantly sitting in 
seances and who was known to be incessantly 
searching for evidence of identity, it was prob- 
ably an easy thing to obtain this information 
from the mind of one of his son's fellow officers 

[101] 



The New Black Magic 

who was one of the group photographed, and to 
convey it to the medium in London and thus to 
Sir Oliver Lodge. Again, hosts of spirits 
were, beyond doubt, witnesses of the taking 
of the photograph, any one of whom would 
have been able to impress the mind of the 
London medium with the fact. And a public 
man like Sir Oliver Lodge, whose picture has 
appeared in a hundred newspapers, could never 
claim to be wholly unknown to any particular 
medium. 

I have, in the course of my own researches, 
found repeatedly that intimate conversations, 
carried on in the open air and at some distance 
from the seance-room, had been overheard and 
were intelligently commented upon on our return 
and before we could ask any questions. While 
in Australia, some years ago, some of my doings 
and movements were made known to a lady in 
England who was then deep in spiritistic re- 
searches, and whom I have since been able to save 
from the asylum. 

On one occasion, when a fog detained me in 
London and the members of our circle were anx- 
ious to ascertain whether I would be able to be 
present at the sitting, I was accurately located by 
the spirits, and the arrival at and departure of 
my train from the various stations and the mo- 

[ 102] 



The Evidence of True Science 

ment of my arrival at the house were given with 
the most astonishing correctness. 

It will be seen, therefore, what extraordinary 
possibilities are within the reach of these spirits 
and that incidents such as those cited by Doyle 
and Lodge cannot by any possible chance be taken 
as proofs of identity. 

One is astonished to find at this hour of the 
day serious-minded men, acquainted with the in- 
tricacies of the subject, citing as evidence of 
identity communications from a spirit wholly un- 
known to them, but whose actual existence and 
the mode and place of whose death have been 
verified by inquiry. We are daily reading in the 
newspapers of the lives and deaths of persons 
unknown to us and, whether interested or not, 
these incidents are absorbed by our subconscious 
minds and become permanent possessions of our 
mental storehouse. We have no conscious recol- 
lection of them and do not recognize them when 
they are presented to the working mind. What is 
easier for a spirit than to extract them from the 
subconscious storehouse and to dramatize them 
in a form that has the most vivid appearance of 
reality. One would imagine that the most super- 
ficially informed student of the phenomena would 
discern the clumsiness of the trick, and would 
refuse to accept that kind of thing as evidence of 

[ 103] 



The New Black Magic 

identity. But it is wonderful what men will get 
themselves to believe when the mind is predis- 
posed in some particular direction or fascinated 
by some plausible theory. 

There is a further consideration which I 
should like to submit to the thoughtful reader. 
It is well known today that, for the production 
of true manifestations, a considerable amount of 
intelligence and experience are called for on the 
part of the operating spirit. Subtle forces have 
to be manipulated, barriers have to be broken 
down, and mental and physical obstructions on 
the human side removed. The spirits admit that 
they themselves are learners and experimenters 
in a region bristling with difficulties and that it 
is by no means an easy thing for them "to get a 
message through" to our plane of life, as they 
put it. 

Now is it not a remarkable circumstance that 
while many of the "higher" spirits claim to have 
been long at work at this kind of thing with ad- 
mittedly limited success, a young officer who, in 
his earth-life, had taken no interest in the sub- 
ject, should so readily and so soon after his death 
have found the means of easy communication 
with his people. One wonders how and where 
he learned to manipulate the subtle and complex 
forces which made such communication possible. 

[ 104] 



The Evidence of True Science 

But it seems to me that I cannot better sum up 
the entire argument of this chapter than by quot- 
ing a striking paragraph from the pen of the late 
Dr. Orestes Brownson, who had himself experi- 
mentally observed and studied the phenomena 
and whose book, The Spirit Rapper, 17 is perhaps 
one of the best we have on the subjtct. 

"Undoubtedly the supposed dead bring pre- 
tended proofs of their identity, but these proofs 
are in no wise conclusive. They remind you of 
peculiarities which the dead and you alone knew ; 
the mysterious pencil imitates his writing. But 
the devils were invisible witnesses of those pecul- 
iarities; doubtless they can skilfully counterfeit 
handwriting, they that can work prodigies much 
more extraordinary. And they know enough of 
the human heart to know that, in persuading you 
a loved one is there conversing with you, they 
will secure a better hearing, when, with pretended 
simplicity, they boldly declare that Catholic teach- 
ing is deceptive. These invisible interlocutors take 
the most august names, such as that of St. Louis 
and even of St. Paul, and under these names, 
they contradict the faith of St. Louis and the 
teaching of St. Paul, and repeat, like parrots, the 
humanitarian phrases of our modern philoso- 
phers. But history shows that there have been 

17 P. 360. 

[105] 



The New Black Magic 

authentic apparitions of the glorious dead at- 
tested by miracles ; not one of them declared that 
he was mistaken when he believed and taught 
Catholic dogma during his mortal life. What 
matters it, then, that these late comers, who, tak- 
ing at random the names of our saints and those 
of the heroes of free-thought, emphatically pro- 
claim some errors resuscitated before them by 
a dozen scribblers notoriously unbelieving." 

In a work 18 by the French astronomer, Profes- 
sor Flammarion, who has devoted years of study 
and research to this subject, we meet with this 
significant statement: 

"As to beings different from ourselves — what 
may their natures be? Of this we cannot form 
any idea. Souls of the dead? This is far from 
being demonstrated. The innumerable observa- 
tions which I have collected during more than 
forty years, all prove to me the contrary. No 
satisfactory identification has been made. That 
souls survive the destruction of the body I have 
not a shadow of doubt. But that they manifest 
themselves by the processes employed in seances, 
the experimental method has not yet given us 
absolute proof. Up to this day, I have sought 
in vain for certain proofs of personal identity 
through mediumistic communications." 

18 Psychic Forces. 

[ 106] 



The Evidence of True Science 

I have thus placed before the reader the re- 
corded results of true and unbiased research in 
the sphere of psychical science, and from these 
it will be evident to all reasonable minds that 
there is not a shadow of ground for placing any 
confidence in the statements and claims of Sir 
Oliver Lodge and Sir Conan Doyle. 



[107] 



VI 



THE EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN 
THOUGHT AND EXPERIENCE 



THE EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN 
THOUGHT AND EXPERIENCE 

I have on pages 19 et seq. briefly summarized 
what may be regarded as the essential principles 
of the "New Revelation," so far as they can be 
gathered from the statements of Lodge and 
Doyle, and from the more or less vague utter- 
ances of the "higher" spirits of the seance-room. 
I now propose to examine these principles some- 
what more closely — in the light of the teachings 
of Historic Christianity and of Universal Chris- 
tian experience. It will also be necessary to 
quote, by way of introduction, a few scientific 
authorities whom we can scarcely regard as the 
champions of Christianity. 

With the implied claim that there is anything 
new about disclosures of this kind, or about their 
mode of delivery, I have already dealt in the pre- 
ceding pages. It will have been seen from the 
facts and arguments there adduced that the me- 
diumistic process and mediumistic communica- 
tions are in no sense a recent breaking-down of 
a dividing wall between the two worlds, seeing 
that such a wall, in the spiritistic sense, has 
as a matter of fact never existed, all nations and 

[in] 



The New Black Magic 

races having, from times immemorial, been ac- 
quainted with modes of communication between 
the worlds seen and unseen. It was all along "the 
man in the street" who possessed the right kind 
of knowledge and the scientific who was the ig- 
noramus. "It came to be recognized," as the 
late Professor Alfred Russel Wallace justly ob- 
served, "that the belief of the uneducated and un- 
scientific world rested on a broad basis of alleged 
facts which the scientific world scouted and 
scoffed at as absurd and impossible." It is mere 
arrogance, therefore, which makes these men 
pose before their fellows as the discoverers of 
new and wonderful psychic laws and secrets. 
And the implication that 

1. The "New Revelation" is (in any sense) 
divine and authoritative will be seen to be equally 
absurd and fallacious. So long as those who 
make this claim are themselves constrained to 
admit "that all the accounts of the life beyond the 
grave differ in detail," that opinion is not always 
uniform over yonder any more than it is here, 
and "that we have unhappily to deal with absolute 
coldblooded lying on the part of wicked and mis- 
chievous intelligences," they cannot possibly talk 
about a Revelation. That can never by any 
chance be a Revelation which comes by messen- 
gers whom we cannot identify, who lie and cheat 

[112] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

and contradict themselves, and who leave us, with 
respect to those matters on which we most desire 
light and information, in a state of hopeless per- 
plexity and bewilderment — to say nothing of the 
numerous moral and physical evils attending its 
delivery. We can, therefore, safely dismiss this 
silly claim with the contempt which it deserves. 

When Sir Conan Doyle and the "higher" spirit 
further state that it has become certain — with 
ever fuller knowledge — that 

2. Man has never fallen because he has always 
been evolving, through the man-like ape, and the 
ape-like man, we are brought face to face with 
another of those bold pronouncements which are 
paraded before the half-educated as the certain 
findings of modern science, but which are in real- 
ity nothing but assumptions and, at best, wholly 
unproved and unprovable theories. 

I do not in the least claim to possess any spe- 
cific knowledge on a subject admittedly bristling 
with so many difficulties and presenting so many 
varied and complex problems even for the spe- 
cialist. But I do claim to have that acquaintance 
with it which is within the reach of all who keep 
in touch with our current literature and who 
follow the trend of true scientific thought respect- 
ing these matters. But all this current scientific 
literature goes to show that, in recent years, a 

[113] 



The New Black Magic 

great reaction of ideas has taken place with re- 
gard to the evolutionary theory and that, where 
it is accepted at all, it has undergone such modi- 
fications that its original characteristics can 
scarcely be recognized. There is, in any case, so 
much diversity of opinion on the subject amongst 
the most renowned scientists that nothing can 
be asserted with any degree of certainty, and that 
consequently the notion that the body of man 
has gradually risen through evolutionary proc- 
esses out of the animal world cannot be spoken 
of as the necessary result of fuller knowledge. 
I submit the following statements to the reader's 
serious consideration : 

Dr. Bumueller, a recognized specialist in anat- 
omy, declares: 

"The testimony of comparative anatomy is de- 
cidedly against the theory of man's descent from 
the ape." (Mensch oder Affe., p. 59, Ravens- 
burg, 1900.) And he goes so far as to add: 
"Even the possibility of a connecting link is 
disproved by the tendency of apes and semi- 
apes to diverge more and more in the course 
of their higher development in anatomical 
structure from the human type." (Op. cit., 
p. 91.) 

Commenting on Klaatsch's views expressed 
at the Anthropological Congress of Lindau in 

["4] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

1899, Johannes Ranke, the great biologist, justly 
observed : 

"Whilst a charming picture of the past and 
possibly of the future is being shown us, and 
whilst a fanciful design is being carried out in 
all directions, we are as a rule in quest of facts, 
not theories. The facts, however, upon which 
Herr Klaatsch claims to base his ingenious the- 
ory, do not at present exist, and I must protest 
against his assuming that they have been fur- 
nished by zoology and palaeontology any more 
than by anatomy. . . . All else is still a matter 
of hypothesis, and if anyone attempts to use it 
in order to produce a finished picture the result is 
a work merely of the imagination." 

In the closing address delivered at the Fifth 
International Congress of Zoologists, August 16, 
1901, Professor W. Branco, Director of the Geo- 
logical and Palaeontological Institute of Berlin 
University, speaking on the theme "Fossil Man/'' 
set forth the following conclusions: 

"1. No human remains of the tertiary period 
have been discovered. 2. Man appears suddenly 
in the quaternary period unheralded by transi- 
tional forms. 3. Diluvial human remains 
abound, but diluvial man appears at once as a 
true human being, possessing in most cases a 
cranium that would do credit to the most intellec- 

[ii5] 



The New Black Magic 

tual of modern men, without long ape-like arms 
or long ape-like canine teeth, a genuine man from 
head to foot." 

What the great Rudolph Virchow said some 
twenty years ago is as true today as it was then : 

"According to the studies that have been made 
prehistoric men did not resemble monkeys any 
more than men of the present day. . . . We can- 
not teach, nor can we regard as one of the results 
of scientific research the doctrine that man is de- 
scended from the ape or from any other animal." 

One of the most eminent of present-day biol- 
ogists, Dr. Hans Driesch, writes: 

"If new species came into existence by the 
process of gradual and imperceptible transforma- 
tions covering periods of thousands and millions 
of years . . . nature would contain numerous 
intermediate types . . . bearing the structural 
characteristics partly of the new and partly of the 
old species. . . . My most careful investigations 
and study of the forms of extinct and extant life 
have led me to the conclusion that intermediate 
types never existed. No such types have been 
found in nature. The classes and families of 
plants and animals have always been distinctly 
separated as they are now, and they have always 
formed distinct systems as they do today. There 
never was a class or family of plants or animals 

[116] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

which bore the characteristics of two different 
species. The Darwinian theory of Organic Evo- 
lution is therefore in open contradiction to real- 
ity. . . . : ' (Philosophy of the Organic, vol. 1, 
p. 268.) 

Dr. Driesch is positively scathing in his criti- 
cism of Darwinism, regarding it as already scien- 
tifically dead: 

"It (Darwinism) is," he says, "a matter of his- 
tory, like that other curiosity of history, Hegel's 
philosophy. Both are variations on the theme 
'how to lead a whole generation by the nose,' and 
neither is very likely to give ages to come a high 
opinion of the latter part of our century." 

"For men of clear intellect, Darwinism has 
long been dead and the last argument brought 
forward in support thereof is scarcely more than 
a funeral oration in accordance with the principle 
de mortuis nil nisi bonum (say nothing but good 
of the dead), and with the underlying conviction 
of the real weakness of the subject chosen for 
defense." (Biologisches Zentralblatt.) 

Many more authorities, expressing similar 
views, might be quoted; but these will suffice to 
show what Sir Conan Doyle's assertion is worth 
and what good grounds we have for challenging 
its legitimacy. As in the psychical sphere of in- 
vestigation, so here, too, his wish or natural lean- 

[117] 



The New Black Magic 

ing is manifestly father to his thought, and his 
cool assumption as scientific fact of what is 
mere speculation is but one of those well-known 
maneuvers with which so many of our pseudo 
and amateur scientists have made us familiar. 
"I am absolutely convinced," writes a French 
scientist, 19 "that a man is, or is not, an evolution- 
ist, not for reasons drawn from natural history, 
but by reason of his philosophical opinions." 

But even if the development of the human body 
out of preceding animal forms of life could ever 
be shown to be an established fact of science, it 
could in no wise touch or invalidate the truth of 
the primitive doctrine of the Fall. It is a truth 
which belongs to man's soul, or spirit-life, and the 
soul begins where evolution ends. Spirit cannot 
grow or be evolved out of matter, and evolution 
can only take place in the sensitive powers of 
man — in his organs. But the soul is above the 
organs and no animal, however closely approach- 
ing the form of man, can be called man unless 
there be in it a spiritual and immortal soul. And 
this soul, as all accurate thinkers agree, must be 
God's special and independent creation. It will 
thus be seen that there is not, and never can be, 
in this part of Doyle's arguments, any valid ob- 
jection to the Christian doctrine of Original Sin 

"Prof. Yves Delage. 

[Jl8] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

and the Fall of Man, since the doctrine belongs 
to a sphere in which the physical scientist is not 
competent to pronounce judgment. "There might 
have been ten Falls and the thing would have 
been quite consistent with everything which we 
know from physical science." "Nothing," forcibly 
observes Mr. Chesterton, "can be, in the strictest 
sense of the word, more comic than to set so 
shadowy a thing as the conjectures made by the 
vaguer anthropologists about the primitive man, 
against so solid a thing as the sense of sin. Sci- 
ence knows nothing whatever about prehistoric 
man, for the excellent reason that he is prehis- 
toric. . . . There is no tradition of progress; 
but the whole human race has a tradition of a 
Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dis- 
semination of this idea is used against its authen- 
ticity. Learned men literally say that this pre- 
historic calamity cannot be true because every 
race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep 
pace with these paradoxes." 20 

When we turn to the authoritative Christian 
doctrine of the Fall and to the facts of confirma- 
tive Christian experience, we are met by evidence 
in its favor which is simply overwhelming. But 
unfortunately in this respect, too, modern scien- 
tists and philosophers are apt to make the wildest 

20 Orthodoxy. 

[119] 



The New Black Magic 

possible misstatements and to display an amount 
of ignorance which would cause amusement were 
it not that it is so often attended by such direful 
consequences to serious and truth-seeking souls. 
A single reference to a primer on Catholic dogma 
would dissipate such ignorance. I am not writing 
a book on Christian doctrine and cannot, there- 
fore, go very deeply into the matter ; but I will, 
for those seriously interested in the subject, 
briefly quote from a standard work 21 what the 
Church's teaching is on this point: 

"All the evils and all the harm done to the hu- 
man soul through the Fall and through Original 
Sin are evils by comparison with a higher good. 
Original Sin cannot be discussed in itself; it has 
to be stated by comparison, and the term compari- 
son is the high and privileged state in which man 
was created originally; we must keep our eyes 
fixed on that ideal state if we are to understand 
Original Sin. . . . When God created man he 
put into the human soul a gift called technically 
the gift of original justice. . . . That gift (whose 
supernatural psychological value could not be 
overstated) made the human will perfectly sub- 
ordinate to the will of God, established it in per- 
fect harmony with God; the loss of it brought 
about a falling back of the soul into itself, which 

:i The Human Soul, by Dom Ansgar Vonier, O.S.B. 
[ I20] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

need not be positive rebellion against God, yet 
which, by comparison with that adhesion of the 
will to God, looks like rebellion. . . . It is a pri- 
vation because God meant the soul to have this 
gift. It is in a state of enmity to God (again by 
comparison) because without this gift the hu- 
man will cannot rise above itself with an unselfish 
preference for God. 

"The absence of this gift is truly called sin be- 
cause the absence is owing to the free act of the 
human will, the will of Adam. . . . 

"Death of the body, the flesh that wars against 
the spirit, and the spirit that wars against the 
flesh, the infirmity of the will-power, and the ig- 
norance of the mind, that make temptation so 
dangerous, all that dismal condition of human 
nature bewailed so eloquently by St. Paul and 
St. Augustine, are not Original Sin. They con- 
stitute the Fall ; for we know that Baptism which 
destroys Original Sin, does not alter the sad con- 
ditions of our nature. . . . 

"Thus Baptism is the end of Original Sin and 
yet it is not the end of the fallen condition of 
man. 

"Now the spirit part of man does not fall un- 
der heredity. The mode of transmission, then, 
which alone is recognized by St. Thomas and 
Catholic theology generally is simply the fact of 

[ 121 ] 



The New Black Magic 

one human being coming from another human 
being through the laws of generation, or more 
simply the fact of our being the children, through 
successive generations, of Adam." 

Now we may surely assert with confidence that 
the entire moral history of man and the very ex- 
istence of Religion today bear witness to the 
truth of this doctrine. The very circumstance 
that a teaching so hateful to human pride and 
self-conceit, and so unpleasantly opposing itself 
to our natural cravings and inclinations, should 
be found in all human races, and that it should 
have resisted all efforts to eradicate it, can only 
be explained by the fact that it is one of the 
earliest inheritances of the human family. It 
has, of course, found different modes of expres- 
sion in different races and in different systems of 
religion; but only the deep underlying sense of 
its truth could have caused it to survive all the 
corroding influences of human passion and all the 
antagonistic forces of human science and philos- 
ophy. Man believes in the Fall, not merely be- 
cause he finds it difficult to overcome certain ani- 
mal propensities, but because he has in himself 
the distinct consciousness of a higher, but lost, 
and yet recoverable good, and because he knows 
that he sins in view of a clearly recognised higher 
obligation. 

[122] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

It is, as a matter of fact, on the scientific, not 
on the Christian and theological side that the real 
difficulty of the matter lies; for no unchristian 
scientific theory has yet satisfactorily explained 
how this universal and persistent consciousness 
arose and how we are to account for its sur- 
vival. And that it does survive, even in the mod- 
ern scientist, we need not doubt for a moment. 
His constant occupation with the problem is evi- 
dence of that fact. We do not trouble ourselves 
to incessantly refute an assertion which we thor- 
oughly believe to be groundless. God never any- 
where leaves Himself without a witness, we may 
be sure. The modern man may ignore and slight 
and obscure the witness; but he cannot possibly 
succeed in permanently silencing it. De Maistre 
wisely observed : "I do not know what the heart 
of a villain is like. I only know that of an up- 
right man and it is frightful." 

It is interesting to observe that, in this respect, 
the true philosopher and student of human nature 
is on the side of the Catholic theologian, even 
though he may not himself profess the Catholic 
faith and use a theological phraseology. In the 
last of his interesting lectures on "The Varieties 
of Religious Experience," delivered in Edinburgh 
in 1901 and 1902, the late Professor W. James 
went to the very root of the matter when he 

[ 123] 



The New Black Magic 

inquired : "Is there under all the discrepancies of 
creeds a common nucleus to which they bear their 
testimony unanimously, and ought we to consider 
the testimony true?" And he replies "that there 
is a uniform deliverance in which all religions 
meet — namely, an uneasiness which is a sense that 
there is something wrong about us as we natu- 
rally stand and that this experience is literally 
and objectively true as far as it goes." And, "the 
solution," he continues, "is a sense that we are 
saved from the wrongness by making proper con- 
nection with the higher powers." 

It is difficult to conceive of a sounder scientific 
basis for the Christian doctrine of the Fall of 
Man and of his redemption through Jesus Christ. 

But I may not linger over this deeply interest- 
ing aspect of the subject. There is no writer who 
has so forcibly summed up this universal witness 
of the human heart to the truth of this Christian 
doctrine as the late Dr. Brownson. I feel con- 
fident that his words will find an echo in every 
mind that has still the power of thinking accu- 
rately and of judging rightly. "No man," wrote 
Dr. Brownson," 22 can analyze the facts of human 
experience without finding them prove incontest- 
ably that our destiny, whatever it be, lies above 
the level of our present natural powers. Our 

82 Necessity of Revelation, Brownson's Review, 1848. 
[124] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

race then must have once possessed powers, nat- 
ural and supernatural, which it does not possess 
now, and therefore powers which it must have 
lost or forfeited. All facts of experience as well 
as universal tradition bear witness to some great 
catastrophe, to some terrible revulsion, which 
man at some remote period must have suffered. 
The soul appears to every nice observer, to retain 
traces of a lost grandeur, and to be filled with an 
undying regret for what once was, but is no 
longer hers. She appears to be tortured by her 
reminiscences. Even before illumined by faith, 
she regards herself as expelled from her early 
home, as an exile from her native country and a 
sojourner in a strange land. She bears with her 
the secret memory of a lost paradise, for which 
she sighs, and with her recollections of which, dim 
and fading though they be, she contrasts what- 
ever she finds in the land of her exile. What is 
the poetry of all nations but the low wail or wild 
lament of the soul over her lost Eden — the music 
in which she expresses the wearisomeness of the 
banishment and her longing to return and dwell 
again in the sweet bowers of her early youth, of 
her childhood's home? 

"Hence, also, the universality of sacrifice 
proves the universality of the belief in the primi- 
tive Fall, that man has fallen from his original 

[125] 



The New Black Magic 

state, and now lies below the level of his destiny, 
without the ability to attain it." 

The "scientific" objection to the truth of the 
Christian doctrine of the Fall having thus been 
shown to be wholly groundless, and the doctrine, 
on the contrary, to be resting on a secure and im- 
pregnable foundation, it will be seen that Doyle's 
contention that 

3. The Incarnation and Sufferings and Death 
of Jesus Christ were in no sense an atonement 
for the sins of man is equally fallacious and un- 
tenable. Indeed, we may assert the very con- 
trary and maintain that, granting the truth of the 
former, the presumption is altogether in favor of 
the truth of the latter. If man has fallen and be- 
come separated from God, and if he cannot, by 
the powers of his own nature, raise himself to 
that union and friendship with God for which 
he was destined, it is reasonable to conclude that 
God would furnish a means by which this can be 
effected and the destiny achieved. And, since 
that destiny is above nature, it is equally reason- 
able to conclude that the means of restoration 
would be above nature — supernatural. 

One cannot warn sufficiently against those sys- 
tems of Christian thought which claim to be es- 
sentially "rational," against these "perfect recon- 
ciliations between science and religion." Such 

[126] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

systems harbor a fundamental fallacy and indi- 
cate their purely human origin — the man-made 
article in religion. There must manifestly be 
mysteries in a divine revelation. Truths apper- 
taining to the supernatural order, although not 
contrary to reason, can scarcely be expected to 
be fully within the reach of reason. If we could 
discern them by the conclusions of the intellect 
we would be within the sphere of science, not of 
religion, and the best educated man, however 
base his character and unsatisfactory his life, 
would then have the clearest perception of divine 
truth. And, what injustice this would be to the 
poor and handicapped and illiterate amongst 
men! 

It is indeed Divine Wisdom which hides the 
mysteries of the spiritual world from the proud 
and arrogant, and reveals them to the poor in 
spirit — to those of humble faith and of a peni- 
tent and contrite heart! 

Now one would imagine that if there is any- 
thing certain in this world, it is the fact that the 
dogma of the Incarnation and Sufferings and 
Death of the Son of God, as an atonement for the 
sins of man, is a fundamental and integral part 
of the primitive Christian Revelation. All Scrip- 
ture, all history, all Christian experience, bear 
witness to it, and with it Christianity itself must 

[ 127] 



The New Black Magic 

certainly stand or fall. It would surely be an 
utterly hopeless task to seek to prove that this 
dogma is the result of later theological specula- 
tion. How could we account for the preparatory 
sacrificial system of the Old Covenant, for the 
remarkable prophecies having their fulfillment in 
the death of Christ, for the implicit and explicit 
statements of Christ Himself, of all the Apostles, 
for the belief and teaching of the earliest pro- 
fessors and saints and martyrs of the Christian 
faith, of the entire Christian world in all ages. 
If human evidence and testimony can establish 
any fact at all this fact surely is established. 

"The Person of Jesus Christ," writes a thinker 
of our own time,* "is the central idea of Chris- 
tianity and the most precious object of its faith. 
Whence arises the unique value of this idea? Is 
it as the preacher of an elevated morality that 
Jesus is dear to his followers ? Plainly not. The 
Love of God and of one's neighbor, compassion 
for every living creature, has been preached with 
much eloquence by other religions; not in these 
things shall we find the distinctive feature of the 
religion of Christ. What renders it unique is 
its conception of Salvation personified in one who 
was both divine and human — Jesus. It is the 
idea of the God-man." 

*Prince Eugene Troubetzkoy in the Hibbert Journal of April, 
1918. 

[128] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

To quote, by way of confirmation, the teach- 
ings of Christ and of his Apostles would mean 
quoting the better part of the New Testament. 
I will here confine myself to but a few statements 
which summarize these teachings and which, with 
any other interpretation than that stated above, 
will be seen to be wholly incomprehensible and 
meaningless. 

We read in St. Matthew, xx, 28 : 

"Even as the son of man is not come to be 
ministered unto, but to minister and to give his 
life a redemption for many." 

In St. Matthew, xxvi, 28: 

"For this is my blood of the new testament 
which shall be shed for many unto the remission 
of sins." 

And the Apostolic testimony is equally 
clear and may be summed up in these refer- 
ences : 

Coloss. 1, 19 and 20: 

"Because in him it hath well pleased the 
Father that all fullness should dwell. And 
through him to reconcile all things unto himself, 
making peace through the blood of his cross, both 
as to the things that are on the earth and the 
things that are in heaven." 

I. St. Tim. ii, 5-6: 

"For there is one God and one mediator of God 
[ 129 ] 



The New Black Magic 

and men, the man Christ- Jesus, who gave himself 
a redemption for all.''* 

I. St. Peter, i, 18-19: 

"Knowing that you were not redeemed with 
corruptible things as gold and silver . . . but 
with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb 
unspotted and undented." 

And equally clear and unequivocal is the wit- 
ness and profession of the earliest confessors of 
the Faith, of the saints and martyrs and doctors 
of the first two centuries of the Church. 

St. Ignatius calls himself Theophorus — that is, 
God-bearer, because he bears Jesus in his heart. 

St. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, says to 
his judges - "How shall I hate Him whom I 
adore, my King and my Saviour?'" 

St. Vital exclaims: "Lord Jesus, my Saviour 
and My God, vouchsafe to receive my soul." 

In the writings of Tertullian, Origen, Clement 
of Alexandria, St. Irenaeus, St. Justin, etc., we 
find such testimonies as these: "Everywhere 
Christ is believed, Christ is adored. Believe Him, 
O man Who is God and Man, Who suffered and 
is adored as the Living God." 

But literally endless would have to be the quo- 
tations if one were to attempt to deal with this 
aspect of the subject in anything like an adequate 
manner. Works, specifically presenting the evi- 

[130] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

dence, must be consulted for this purpose. So 
overwhelming, indeed, is the evidence that per- 
verseness and blindness of mind, or crass igno- 
rance, can alone account for the attempt to cir- 
cumvent it, or to explain it away, and, with entire 
justice, writes a distinguished medical confrere 
of Sir Conan Doyle 23 : 

"Now this (Christianity as a moral system 
only) I hold to be as pernicious as it is absurd. 
If Christ was only a great human teacher, what 
did He know more about God or morality than 
any other man who might have arrived at his 
knowledge by ordinary processes? What could 
He know more than you or I? He may have 
inferred or have guessed, but what knowledge 
had He ? . . . It is not in the moral teaching of 
Our Lord that the great power of Christianity 
lies, but in the belief that He did for men that 
which man could not do for himself — the belief 
that He died for you and me and in some mys- 
terious manner made God and man at one. I 
have no power to theorize on this great fact, but 
I am sure that history teaches that it is faith in 
Christ, a personal Christ, who died for us men 
and for our salvation, that has given the power 
to Christianity and has moulded the life of the 
world. Would men have gone to the stake, or 

23 Sir Russell Reynolds, Bart, M.D. Essays and Addresses. 
[ 131 1 



The New Black Magic 

to the lions, or the dungeon, for a moral teach- 
ing? Would they have sung psalms in dying 
agonies for a moral teaching? Would crusades 
have been made for a mere idea ? No, it has been 
for the belief in what He did and is doing at the 
right hand of God that men have been willing, 
nay, eager, to die." 

It is abundantly clear, then, that it is to Christ 
as the Divine Saviour and Redeemer, not to 
Christ as the moral teacher or exemplar, or 
higher spirit, that the marvelous transforming 
effects of Christianity are due. And what are 
these effects, briefly stated, as history and ex- 
perience display them before our eyes: 

1. Christ saved the decaying Roman world 
from corruption. 

2. He laid the foundations of a new and true 
civilization. 

3. He created numerous works of charity. 

4. His doctrine enabled the best and wisest of 
men to attain to the highest and noblest life. 

5. It created saints and martyrs innumerable. 

6. It was, and is today, man's one true source 
of consolation in life and in death. 

These facts, this transforming effect in the 
world's life of the belief in Christ's redeeming 
death, no sane man can possibly deny; but the 
problem which presents itself to the reflecting 

I 132 ] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

mind is : how are we to account for it ; how came 
this belief to be so firmly and persistently estab- 
lished in the human heart? 

Very little reflection will show that few of 
those who first professed this belief after the 
death of the Apostles, and who laid down their 
lives for it, had seen or heard Christ. They 
learned the doctrine from the oral teaching of 
others, or from written documents. But docu- 
ments were costly and not plentiful in those days ; 
few, moreover, could have been able to read and 
decipher them; the collected records which we 
possess today and which we call the New Testa- 
ment did not as yet exist. Towards the close of 
the Apostolic age, when most of the witnesses of 
Christ's miraculous works had died, verification 
must have been extremely difficult, and, at best, 
such verification would only have been human 
and therefore, in itself, imperfect and fallible 
testimony. And yet, century after century, in 
uncounted numbers, strong men and delicate 
women, indeed mere children, gladly and will- 
ingly died as witnesses for the truth of this doc- 
trine — submitted themselves to the most extreme 
forms of suffering and of pain. Whence was 
their belief, their unwavering and unfailing as- 
surance? We have but the choice between two 
alternatives. Either God Himself, in a miracu- 

[ 133] 



The New Black Magic 

lous way, and in fulfillment of the promise that 
the Holy Spirit would lead into all truth bore di- 
vine and confirming witness which could leave no 
doubt, or the best of men, in spite of the action 
of the Holy Ghost, fell, immediately after the dis- 
appearance of Christ, into the grossest error, 
misunderstood and misinterpreted His teachings, 
and committed the sin of idolatry — adoring and 
worshipping as God a mere created being and 
teacher. 

And God, Who by a single operation of His 
power, could have prevented this lapse, allowed 
this thing to be done, looked on while the best and 
noblest of His creatures shed their life-blood for 
a monstrous misconception, and, mark it well, 
by means of this misconception regenerated and 
saved a world! 

If this be conceivable, we might well ask with a 
learned Catholic psychologist 24 : Is it a rational 
universe if the moral life of mankind be founded 
on an illusion? Can the holiness of the world's 
saints, the virtues of its best heroes, the moral 
life of the mass of mankind, have had their source 
and origin, their never-failing food and support, 
in one huge hallucination?" 

Or, as another writer puts it: "There is no 
God in Heaven if man could conceive and exe- 

u Rev. M. Maher, S. J. Psychology. P. 536. 
[134] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

cute, with full success, the gigantic design of ap- 
propriating to himself supreme worship and 
usurping the name of God — if he could, while 
plunging the world into idolatry, at the same 
time regenerate it !" 

Are we not here face to face with an insuper- 
able difficulty and is it not an infinitely greater one 
for these innovators and reconstructionists than 
for us who firmly hold and profess belief in Christ 
the Divine Redeemer and Saviour of the world? 
Is it not for them to solve this strange problem 
if they can ? Would not acceptance of their view, 
rightly considered, undermine the very founda- 
tions of all religion and destroy, in the logical 
and seriously reflecting mind, all belief in an all- 
knowing and all-wise God? For if Doyle and 
Lodge and the "higher" spirits are right, is not 
God daily and hourly continuing to tolerate a ter- 
rible delusion, allowing the best of men to find 
solace and comfort and hope in a palpable lie — 
in a gross error and misconception ? Or will any 
man presume to say that dying soldiers and 
sailors and the sin and sorrow-stricken of 
the world derive comfort and consolation 
from a perusal of the records of the life of Christ 
— from His moral teachings ? Is it not the Cruci- 
fix for which they clamor — the sign visibly em- 
bodying the fact and truth of that redeeming 

[135] 



The New Black Magic 

death which alone has made the forgiveness of 
sin, the union of the soul with God, the hope of 
a happy immortality, peace of mind and true con- 
solation, here and now a living reality and cer- 
tainty ? 

Fancy reading the beatitudes and the moral 
precepts of Christ to a man who is dying, whose 
life is spent, who cannot possibly carry those pre- 
cepts into practice, but who regrets his misspent 
life, is contrite and penitent, and craves to be rec- 
onciled to God! Would it not be mere mockery 
to show such a man what his life might and 
should have been ? 

How very clearly and conclusively does human 
experience, the instinctive perceptions of the 
awakened human soul, confirm the truth, nay, 
the burning need of this primitive Christian doc- 
trine, and demonstrate the fatal error in which 
these New Revelation men have entangled them- 
selves and in which they are striving to entangle 
the world! 

"There is," wrote the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone, 
"a fairly long history behind the orthodox inter- 
pretations, and we cannot, in modesty, suppose 
that the tendencies of thought in our own genera- 
tion necessarily outweigh the experience of the 
centuries." 

And if Christ be divine, how can any man pre- 
[136] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

sume to be able to estimate the real nature and 
degree of His sufferings, and put them on a level 
with the sufferings of any ordinary human crea- 
ture. All human estimates must surely be at 
fault in such a matter as this. We know how 
keenly sensitive natures can suffer, not only on 
account of their own sins and the consequent 
pangs of conscience, but on account of the sins 
and miseries and sorrows of others. Intensify 
this sensitiveness of nature a thousandfold, and 
the amount and complexity of such suffering and 
you will get a good deal nearer to the truth. It 
is just conceivable that the physical sufferings 
of Christ, of which Doyle speaks so lightly, great 
though they were, were not the greatest part of 
the anguish which He endured on the Cross. 
Mind and soul-suffering, as all the world knows, 
may be much keener and much more hard to en- 
dure than pain of body. But, if we once grasp 
the thought that, in some way not understood by 
us, there were concentrated in Christ's conscious- 
ness, and in the fullest form, all the manifold sins 
and vices of mankind, and the agonies and mis- 
eries of human life consequent upon them, we can 
form some slight conception of what those suffer- 
ings were, and how widely they must have dif- 
fered from the sufferings of any individual hu- 
man being. 

1 137 ] 



The New Black Magic 

We have, as a matter of fact, some faint anal- 
ogy to this in certain well-established facts which 
recent psychical research has brought to light. 
We know today that a spirit can become con- 
scious, not only of the life-history, but also of 
the thoughts and emotions of a number of people 
assembled in a room at a given time, can intelli- 
gently comment upon them, and thus give proof 
of the possession of this knowledge. And if this 
be so in the case of a created and limited being, 
whatever its nature, how much more can it be 
conceived to be so with One Who was uncreated 
and unlimited and, in this respect, so different 
from ourselves. 

But, quite apart from these considerations, 
it was surely possible for God, for the accomplish- 
ment of the Divine Redemption, and for that 
expiatory work for which Christ appeared in the 
world, to cause Him to experience in His human 
nature all those agonies of mind and body to 
which our fallen and shipwrecked race is subject. 
How can any man presume to pass judgment on a 
matter so utterly beyond our limited human per- 
ception and understanding? The human intellect 
manifestly becomes very cloudy as soon as it 
touches on the portals of infinity. 

Sir Conan Doyle's assertion that "our 
churches are half empty, women her chief sup- 

[ 138 ] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

porters, both the learned and the poorest classes, 
in town and country, largely alienated from 
her," need not detain us long. It is, of course, an 
obvious and palpable untruth — so far as the 
Roman Catholic Church is concerned. The 
churches which are more than half empty, which 
have become mere entertainment bureaus and 
cheap variety shows — in which not even many in- 
telligent women are supporters — are those in 
which Sir Conan Doyle's or similar kinds of 
Christs are preached. 

The buildings of the Catholic Church in all 
countries, in which, as every Catholic knows, the 
true Historic Christ, the Divine Saviour of the 
World, is preached, and in which His sacraments 
are validly administered, are so crowded that it 
is often difficult to provide adequate accommoda- 
tion and that additional provision has to be made 
in various ways. And any man can at any time 
convince himself that these crowds are composed 
of the learned and unlearned, of rich and poor — 
in many instances of men far in excess of women. 

I can, in this respect, speak from an extensive 
and unique personal experience. I have, in the 
course of my lecturing work, visited many coun- 
tries, have had opportunities of studying Catholic 
activities in Europe, in the Australian Colonies, 
the West Indies, and in South America. I have 

[i39] 



The New Black Magic 

three times crossed the North American conti- 
nent, staying in many cities, both large and small ; 
never have I fulfilled my duties in a half empty 
church. Wherever the congregation was a small 
one, it was due to the circumstance that the 
local Catholic population was small, or that the 
church had not long been built. 

I am writing these lines at a Religious House 
in the heart of the city of Chicago, and adjoining 
a large and beautiful church, of which the lower 
portion is also used for divine services. There 
are ten Masses celebrated in these two churches 
every Sunday, commencing at five o'clock a. m. 
At each of these Masses more than eight hundred 
persons are present, so that between eight and ten 
thousand people hear Mass in this church alone 
every Sunday. And the clergy tell me that this 
applies proportionately to the churches of the 
city and indeed to those of all the States. 

And who has not heard of the marvelous and 
steadily growing activities of the Church, in an 
endless variety of forms, and in every direction? 
Consider, on the other hand, the utter barren- 
ness and impotence of the unitarian church in 
all countries. 

One is simply amazed at the unblushing im- 
pudence with which responsible men impose their 
falsehoods upon the ignorant masses, and with 

[140] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

which they seek to bolster up their wholly illogical 
and impossible theories. 

When we now turn to the Apostolic Writings 
themselves and see whether they throw any light 
on this aspect of the problem, we come upon in- 
formation which is quite startling and which is 
certainly calculated to make even the most ardent 
spiritist pause and reflect. For, even if we for 
the moment disregard the claims to inspiration 
of these Apostolic Writings and go the full 
length with the New Revelation men, the import 
of these statements assumes but a greater sig- 
nificance — at least for every serious student of 
the subject and every really reflecting mind. In- 
deed, on the assumption, as Sir Conan Doyle 
maintains, that the early followers of Christ prac- 
ticed Spiritism and received intimations from the 
other side, the case is so strong against him that 
he has literally not a leg left to stand upon. For 
what spirit could it have been that caused these 
Apostolic men to prophesy that this denial of the 
truth of the doctrine of the Incarnation would 
surely come one day and that, so far from its 
being a higher and truer conception of things, it 
was to be regarded as the very spirit of anti- 
Christ? 

Twice in his book Sir Conan Doyle tells us that 
mischievous and lying spirits no doubt exist, and 

[ 141 ] 



The New Black Magic 

that we must therefore test or try the spirits ; but, 
like all these text-mongers, he does not quote the 
text in its entirety, for it goes on: 

"Because many false prophets are gone out into 
the world. By this is the Spirit of God known. 
Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ 
is come in the flesh is of God. And very spirit 
which dissolveth Jesus (or that confesseth not 
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, as the au- 
thorized version has it) is not of God; and this is 
anti-Christ of whom you have heard that he 
cometh and he is now already in the world." 25 

What the Apostle means by "coming in the 
flesh" is abundantly clear from the Apostolic 
Writings and cannot be disputed by any man. 
This prophetic utterance and warning, therefore, 
is a condemnation, root and branch, of all that 
Doyle and his co-reconstructionists contend for, 
and of all that the "higher" spirits of the seance- 
room assert. But can a more flagrant misuse and 
misapplication of a text be conceived ? 

In another part of Holy Scripture the con- 
demnation is equally clear and the warning 
equally emphatic. In the first epistle of St. Paul 
to St. Timothy, we read : 26 

"Now the spirit manifestly saith that in the 

25 St. John IV, 1-3. 
28 Chap. IV, 1-2. 

[142] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

last times some shall depart from the faith, giving 
heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils, 
speaking lies in hypocrisy and having their con- 
science seared, forbidding to marry, etc., etc." 

"If you believe not that I am he," exclaims 
Christ Himself, "you shall die in your sin." 27 

Again, "The son of man when He cometh 
shall he find, think you, faith on earth?" 28 

The Apostle St. Paul writes to the Galatian 
converts : 

"... There are some that trouble you and 
would pervert the Gospel of Christ, but though 
we or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to 
you besides that (or any other than that, as the 
authorized Protestant version gives it) which 
we have preached to you, let him be anathema 
(accursed). 29 

With these remarkable utterances, I can well 
leave this part of my argument to the judgment 
of those whose minds are not wholly blinded by 
fundamental misconceptions and who are still 
accessible to the appeals of fact and of truth. 
And, by way of a very earnest and personal 
appeal to all into whose hands this book may fall, 
I would say in the words of the Apostle St, Paul : 

" St. John VIII, 24. 

28 St Luke XVIII, 8. 

29 Chap. 1, 7, 8. 

[143] 



The New Black Magic 

"... Keep that which is permitted to thy 
trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words, 
and oppositions of knowledge falsely so-called 
which some promising (or professing) have 
erred concerning the faith. 30 

The teaching of the "New Revelation" finally 
is that. 

4. Death is not a terminus fixing man's destiny, 
but that his moral education and evolution con- 
tinue indefinitely, and that all that can be asserted 
is that there is a temporary penal state which be- 
comes the means of development and progress, 
etc. 

This statement, it must be admitted, is the 
very trump-card of the "New Revelation," as it is 
indeed that of many forms of modern non-Cath- 
olic and non-Christian religious thought and phil- 
osophy. However much the disciples of these 
new cults may differ on other points of teaching, 
they are always in remarkable agreement on this 
point — "that Hell drops out altogether" — that 
there is really nothing much to be feared respect- 
ing the soul's destiny after the death of the body. 
But should not this very consensus of opinion, in 
the midst of so much divergence, arouse our sus- 
picion? Do we not here trace the workings of 
the Zeitgeist — of the unrestrained and , mis- 

80 1 St. Tim. VI, 20, 21. 

[ 144] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

directed human intellect which is forever beating 
its wings against walls of brass? The argu- 
ments urged against the true Christian doctrine 
of Hell invariably base themselves upon the sup- 
posed claims of human reason and upon the want 
of proportion between the shortness of life and 
the eternal duration of punishment — upon the 
love and justice of an all-merciful God. But it 
is in reality the craving of the modern man to 
be free from a law which he instinctively per- 
ceives to be at work in the moral universe, and 
which alone effectively restrains his intellectual 
pride and arrogance, and puts a check upon the 
indulgence of his perverse appetites and pas- 
sions. 

In order to abrogate this law, therefore, he re- 
sorts to the most cunning feats of mental gym- 
nastics and empties the clearest and most em- 
phatic pronouncements of Christ of their obvious 
and legitimate meaning. Indeed, there is prob- 
ably no dogma of the Catholic Church of which 
such foolish and frivolous things have been said 
and written and on which there is such loose and 
illogical thinking as on that of Eternal Punish- 
ment. 

The remarkable thing is that no one has ever 
been known to find fault with the eternity of 
Heaven — with the unchanging happiness and 

[145] 



The New Black Magic 

bliss of the Good, of the Saints and Martyrs of 
Christ's church. The very men who denounce 
the eternity of Hell would be offended if we 
merely suggested the idea that the joys of Heaven 
are not eternal. They would certainly declare 
it to be a defect in God's moral government of 
the world, and in His provisions for the true hap- 
piness of man, if the Saints could be conceived 
to be in a state in which it is still possible for 
them to change their minds, and from which they 
may lapse some time or other. For true happi- 
ness is necessarily associated with the notion of 
a goal reached — of an end attained — of a victory 
permanently won after the long and arduous con- 
flict of life. But, as St. Augustine very logically 
remarks : 

"To say in one and the same sentence life 
eternal shall be without end, punishment eternal 
and Hell have an end were too absurd; whence, 
since the eternal life of the saints shall be with- 
out end, punishment eternal too shall doubtless 
have no end to those whose it shall be." 31 

One is here reminded of the witty remark of a 
great French statesman (M. Thiers) who said: 
"Catholicism may certainly hinder thought, but it 
can only hinder it in those who were not made for 
accurate thinking." 

S1 De Civitate Dei, XXI, 23. 

[I 4 6 ] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

Now this is a subject with which it is difficult 
to deal adequately within the space of a few pages 
— the only thing possible in a work of this kind. 
But I happen to have given a good deal of thought 
to it and to have written a book, specifically deal- 
ing with the arguments commonly urged against 
the truth and reasonableness of the Catholic doc- 
trine of Hell. It has passed through several edi- 
tions in England and a cheap American edition 
has recently been published. 32 I venture to com- 
mend it to any reader who is seriously interested 
in the subject. Many of my correspondents, and 
indeed the entire non-Catholic press, have ad- 
mitted that I have dealt with the subject fully and 
fairly and that I have not shirked any objection 
that can reasonably be urged against the doctrine. 

Several of them have entirely changed their 
viewpoint after perusing the book, and have re- 
turned to their obedience to the Church and the 
practice of their religion. 

What I therefore propose to do here — and in- 
deed all I can do — is to set forth, in a few brief 
and concise paragraphs, what right reason has 
to say about the matter, and what some really 
great and accurate thinkers have said about it. 
From these alone it will be seen how very far Sir 

32 Hell and its Problems. Published at 682 Main St, Buffalo, 
N. Y. Thirty cents, including postage. 

[I47l 



The New Black Magic 

Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge are from the 
truth when they assert that "Hell has long 
dropped out of the thoughts of every reasonable 
man." 

Now we have first of all to fix in our minds 
the wholly incontestable fact that no honest man 
can, by any feat of gymnastics or any trick of 
exegesis, get rid of the plain and clear teaching 
of the New Testament. If that Book teaches 
anything at all, in concise and emphatic terms, 
explicitly and implicitly, it is the doctrine of Hell 
— of an enduring penal state for the perversely 
and obstinately wicked. It is, it should be borne 
in mind, not a question of an isolated text here 
and there which, as Doyle says, may be oriental 
imagery, but of a teaching underlying the entire 
thought-structure of the New Testament and 
which meets us on practically every page of the 
book. With its omission, without the conception 
of a future and permanent state of punishment, 
consequent upon a life of sin and rebellion against 
God, the Christian scheme of Redemption has 
neither consistency nor coherence, and its most 
central doctrines become unreasonable and in- 
comprehensible. 

It is instructive and significant to observe that 
this transparent fact has never been questioned 
by the skeptic and the unbeliever, however 

[148] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

strongly he may have opposed the doctrine itself 
on moral grounds. "It has been reserved for the 
accommodating shallow Christians of modern 
days, who wish to reject it without abandoning 
their belief in Christianity, to throw dust in other 
people's eyes as well as their own, by obscuring 
what is really a very simple matter with ingenious 
— though it may be unconscious — sophistries." 

Such words as are employed by Christ Himself 
in St. Matthew, XXV, 41-46; in St. Mark III, 29 
and IX, 46-47; and Apoc. XIV, 10-11 ; and XXI, 
8, remain, as the late Sir James Stephen rightly 
said, "The most terrific words which have ever 
been spoken in the ears of man." 

But "what Christ teaches is the truth. It is 
unthinkable that He should have told us of hor- 
rors of the future life, for our good, and the 
horrors not really there. . . . We may distrust 
any view of their meaning that conflicts with 
the justice and mercy of God, or we may dis- 
trust our judgment that the meaning does so con- 
flict. But the Revelation we must not dare to 
refuse or reconstruct." 33 

Man's moral nature can, of course, with a cer- 
tain amount of manipulation be made to witness 
falsely. But his unperverted instinct, his normal 
natural conscience, testify in favor of some grie- 

33 The New Pelagianism, by J. H. Williams. 
C 149] 



The New Black Magic 

votis punishment consequent upon sin and final 
impenitence. The doctrine of Hell, therefore, 
underlies the beliefs and sacrificial practices of all 
heathen races. 

"Menace as well as promise," wrote Mr. W. E. 
Gladstone, "menace for those whom promise 
could not melt or move, formed an essential part 
of the provision for working out the redemption 
of the world." And he continues: 

"To presume upon over-riding the express 
declarations of the Lord Himself, delivered from 
His own authority, is surely to break up Revealed 
Religion in its very ground-work, and to sub- 
stitute for it a flimsy speculation, spun, like the 
spider's web, by the private spirit, and about as 
little capable as that web of bearing the strain by 
which the false is to be severed from the true." 

We know for certain that God is good, but we 
also know that God, in spite of His goodness, is 
capable of hurting us very severely and even 
permanently in this life, and that He rigidly and 
unerringly punishes sin. Is it not conceivable, 
therefore, that the severity of human suffering 
here is God's method of saving us from possible 
greater suffering hereafter? 

It is possible that could we understand what 
eternity really is the notion of the reversal of the 

[150] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

soul's condition — the necessary and final effect of 
many acts and habits — would be seen to involve 
an absurdity. 

Any being to whom has been given that won- 
derful power of will with all the consequent re- 
sponsibilities of a state of probation, must be able 
to fail as well as to succeed — the very term "pro- 
bation" implies a risk of failure. What are we to 
deem probable as to the consequences of such 
failure? Reason unaided can tell us very little 
of the soul after death. Certainly we have no 
evidence that it will then be able to undo what it 
has done during life, but rather the contrary. 
The doctrine of the persistence of force does not 
favor such a view and there is nothing which con- 
tradicts the Church's assertion that the state in 
which the soul finds itself at the close of life's 
trial cannot be reversed. If so, the man who dies 
in a state of aversion from the highest light and 
the supreme good must remain in such a state 
with all its inevitable consequences. 

Some will say those consequences need not be 
eternal. But if the cause should be unchangeable, 
how can the consequences change? Moreover, 
we are contemplating what relates to eternity 
when time shall have ceased to be. 

Again, the term, Eternal Punishment, may be 
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The New Black Magic 

an imperfect and inadequate term; it may not 
nearly contain the truth as it actually is. It may 
be a term conveying the nearest possible equiva- 
lent to a state or condition of which we cannot, 
with our present limitations, form an accurate 
idea. Language, capable only of expressing and 
explaining finite things, can scarcely be expected 
to adequately express the infinite. May not the 
difficulty, therefore, be in the term rather than in 
the idea and principle which underlie it, and 
which the term is meant to convey? May it not 
be due to the fact that our power of thought is 
limited, and that our understandings are finite 
and therefore imperfect? 

"Man cannot help erring; but lack of solicitude 
for his eternal welfare, and for the means of 
bringing it about is moral deformity." 34 

"Mortal sin is an essential disorder; it is a 
breaking of the universal harmony." "Nature is 
terrible in its consequences. If the human spirit, 
after doing evil and not repenting, or more clearly 
still, after rising against God and not humbling 
itself before God, were restored to perfect spirit- 
integrity through the simple act of its being sepa- 
rated from the body, the human spirit would be 
the only exception to the law of continuity and 
consequence." 34 

31 The Human Soul, by Dom A. Vonier, O.S.B. 
[152] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

"We all expect this law of consequences to be 
operative in our soul for happiness, i.e., we ex- 
pect that our present efforts at sanctity shall 
make our soul holy for eternity. It is illogical not 
to apply the law when it is a case of moral warp- 
ing and of defilement of the will. 34 

"Temporal losses may not be through one's 
fault, may be caused by mere incapacity; yet 
nature is unsparing. Spiritual losses cannot but 
be the act of deliberate free will and of clear 
knowledge." 34 

We have a certain analogy to the divine law of 
punishment in our own human and imperfect 
modes of measuring out punishment. It is not, 
and cannot be, a question of time. A single act, 
such as a theft or a murder or a forgery, is com- 
mitted in a moment of time, yet the punishment 
inflicted may extend over many years. The law 
does not determine the amount of punishment by 
the time occupied in committing the offense, but 
by the nature of the offense and the moral state 
and character to which it points. Now if this be 
so here, in this present life, where change is still 
possible, and where a transformation can still be 
effected, how is it to be there where a terminus 
of life is reached, where the character, by reason 

34 The Human Soul, by Dom A. Vonier, O.S.B. 
[153 3 



The New Black Magic 

of the nature of the new life, is no longer capable 
of change, and where it is a question of a perma- 
nent moral state and condition? Not a single 
passage can be cited, either from the Old Testa- 
ment or from the New, which even hints at a con- 
tinued or second probation after death. 

A further test of will, moreover, can surely 
only be conceived to exist where two conflicting 
attractions exist. But, in the other state, the 
earthly life and its fascinations will have ceased 
to be ; the bodily senses will no longer be alluring 
the will ; all mundane attractions will have passed 
away. The spiritual end will be seen to be the 
oniy rational end of life and the only end now 
possible. Can a Godward choice, under such con- 
ditions, even if it could be conceived, be of any 
moral value? Could it be called a choice at all? 
It must be clear, too, upon reflection, that if, in 
accordance with a law of God, man's trial-time 
were prolonged indefinitely, additional agencies 
being constantly brought to bear upon him, it 
would be within man's power to defy God. He 
would, in a sense, be compelling God to endure 
his sin and to bear with the manifestations of his 
perverse and rebellious will. Such a law would 
be putting God at the sinner's mercy. The very 
knowledge that a return to God is possible when- 

[i54] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

ever he should begin to weary of his deliberate 
opposition, would tend to confirm a hardened 
nature in that opposition, and would fill the spir- 
itual universe with beings whose ultimate destiny 
would be forever trembling in the balance. 

The familiar plea that the time allotted to us as 
the period of our probation is too short, in view of 
the consequent eternity, is a subtle self-deception. 
It is not, let it be borne in mind, a question of 
certain acts and things done or left undone, but 
of a character formed — finally formed perhaps 
in a moment of time. This moment may come 
early in life; it may come late. No mortal man 
can tell when the decisive crisis in the soul's life 
is reached from God's point of view. "He to 
whom a thousand years are as one day can, if it 
so please Him, as infallibly test the entire bent 
and purpose of the will by a single trial as after 
a course prolonged through countless ages." 

No right-thinking man will be disposed to deny 
that with the light, the opportunities and the aids 
vouchsafed to him, he might at any given moment 
be a much better man than he really is. Life, 
broadly speaking, is long enough to enable a man 
to achieve his aims in the temporal order. It is 
not too short to enable him to achieve his end or 
purpose in the spiritual order. 

[i55] 



The New Black Magic 

"The Thomistic explanation 55 of reprobation is 
to be found, not in the direct pronouncement and 
act of God; it is to be found in the condition of 
the human soul irreparably spoiled by sin." 

"Eternity of pain does not correspond to the 
gravity of the guilt; but it corresponds to the 
irreparable nature of the guilt. ... Its endless- 
ness is not so much a punishment as a condition 
of the spirit." 

"God has made spiritual nature so perfect, that 
a wrong use of their powers will bring about re- 
sults as permanent as the right use of them." 

"As long as man can be saved, God will assist 
him in the work of salvation. After death, his 
spirit-nature does not allow of salvation, because 
it does not allow of change." 

"A second existence for man must, of neces- 
sity, be an existence totally different from all 
our human experience. A second existence could 
never mean this, that we should then do the 
things we have neglected to do during the first 
existence. As all our sensitive life will be gone, 
we cannot do or undo anything of the first, the 
mortal existence." 

"Man, having no other human life, through the 

35 See The Human Soul. 

[156] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

fact of death, cannot be said to have another 
chance; another chance means another human 
life." 

"How much," wrote Mr. Gladstone, "do we 
know of the lot of the perversely wicked ? They 
disappear into pain and sorrow; the veil drops 
upon them in that condition. Every indication of 
a further change is withheld, so that if it be de- 
signed it has not been made known, and is no- 
where incorporated with the divine teaching. 
Whatever else pertains to this sad subject is with- 
held from our too curious and unprofitable gaze. 
The specific and limited statements supplied to 
us are, after all, only expressions, in particular 
form, of immovable and universal laws — on the 
one hand, of the irrevocable union between suffer- 
ing and sin; on the other hand, of the perfection 
of the Most High — both of them believed in full, 
have only in part been disclosed, and having else- 
where, it may be, their plenary manifestation in 
that day of the restitution of all things for which 
a groaning and travailing creation yearns." 

The problem why God created beings whose 
future misery we must be able to foresee, we can- 
not hope to solve with our limited understanding. 
We can but reason from the known to the un- 
known. The mystery, most probably, has its 

[157] 



The New Black Magic 

explanation in the fact of our moral freedom. In 
any case, physical and mental suffering, grievous 
sickness and pain, declining health and the dis- 
comforts of old age, are, in one form or another, 
the lot of all men. And, although God foresaw 
all this natural suffering, He yet created man. 
His foreknowledge respecting a world of anguish 
and woe did not prevent His calling that world 
into being. But if God's manifest action, in the 
matter of our present state, is in the end recon- 
cilable with our intuitive belief in His goodness 
and love, why should it not be equally so in mat- 
ters pertaining to the future life? If, in passing 
into conscious existence, terrible risks respecting 
the present life are incurred by the creature, why 
not equal or conceivably greater risks respecting 
the future life? Bearing in mind the unity of 
nature and of nature's laws, is it not more than 
probable that the law pertains to both states? 
The risks incurred may, for all we know, be the 
necessary adjuncts to the gift of conscious life 
and of free-will. In any case, "If there is one 
thing that is certain it is this: that no one will 
ever be punished with the positive punishment of 
the life to come who has not, with full knowl- 
edge, and complete consciousness, and full con- 
sent, turned his back upon Almighty God." 

It must finally be evident that if everyone is 
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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

to go to Heaven finally, whether they choose it or 
not, then life is only a kind of game and men 
mere pawns that are all put into the box at the 
end. 

And is it credible, we may ask, that the Son of 
God should have become man and have died on 
the Cross, merely to save men from the short 
and temporal consequences of sin ? Does not the 
infinity of the Sacrifice imply an infinity of misery 
as that from which the Sacrifice was intended to 
deliver those who would accept it? 

It is a curious thing that a denial of the doc- 
trine of Hell, as a necessary element in the 
scheme of Redemption, is almost always followed 
by a denial of some other important doctrine con- 
nected with the incarnation and redemption of 
Christ. It inevitably leads to what is termed 
"advanced" or "liberal" views, and what is this 
but another name for disbelief or rejection of 
truths, which the natural and limited human rea- 
son cannot square with its dictates and surmises, 
and against which the unaided intellect rebels. 

It is also a significant thing and worthy of note 
that to the Martyrs and the Saints, who lived 
very close to God, Christ's teaching respecting 
Hell and the punishmnet of sin has never pre- 
sented any moral or intellectual difficulty. It has 

[i59] 



The New Black Magic 

never caused them to love God less, to be less 
willing to die for Him, or to entertain less noble 
or elevating ideas of His character. It is chiefly 
to the easy-going man of the world, to the child 
of the modern age, who often does not himself 
know what he really believes, that these difficul- 
ties occur. It is he who waxes eloquent as to the 
unreasonableness of the doctrine of Hell. 

When the aged Polycarp, the disciple of St. 
John, was put to the torture he said to his tor- 
turers: "You threaten me with the fire which 
only burns for an hour and is then extinguished. 
You do not know the fire of the judgment to come 
and of the eternal punishment reserved for the 
wicked." 

One thing we may surely regard as certain : A 
correct estimate of the truths of the supernatural 
order cannot be formed by the natural human 
reason, least of all by the reason which is not in 
some degree in "rapport" with God and with that 
other-world-order. "The natural (or sensual) 
man receiveth (or perceiveth) not the things of 
the Spirit of God. 36 They are foolishness to him. 
A higher light is needed to perceive them; that 
light is the gift of God, and it is by that light 
alone, responded to by a certain soul-culture and 

3S I Corinth. : 11, 14. 

[i6o] 



Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience 

soul-development, that he can see rightly and 
judge justly. "Everything grows clear," said 
Pasteur, "in the reflections from the Infinite. 
"The more I know, the more nearly is my faith 
that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know 
all, I would have the faith of the Breton peasant 
woman." 

But I cannot here pursue this subject any 
further. Sufficient has been said to show that it 
would be wholly inconsistent with our ideas of 
the dignity and holiness of God and repugnant to 
human reason to assume that Christ, whom even 
Lodge and Doyle regard as a teacher come from 
God, should have misled mankind on so great and 
momentous a matter — "should have told us of 
horrors of the future life, for our good, and the 
horrors not really there." 



[161] 



VII 

THE EVIDENCE OF REASON AND 
COMMON SENSE 



THE EVIDENCE OF REASON AND 
COMMON SENSE 

It is scarcely necessary to state at length what 
true and Historical Christianity has done for the 
world in the past — what the Church and her 
Sacraments mean for millions of intelligent and 
serious-minded men and women today. 

The evidence lies all around us — in an endless 
variety of forms. The daily increasing stream 
of converts into the Catholic Church in all coun- 
tries — in many instances highly intellectual men 
and women who have passed through various 
phases of religious thought and found them want- 
ing — her admitted triumphs and victories during 
the war; the admission of failure of their own 
communions on the part of Anglican Bishops and 
of Heads of other non-Catholic organizations — 
all these constitute a mass of such significant and 
incontrovertible testimony that none can afford 
to disregard it. A feeling is perceptibly gaining 
ground everywhere that the Historic Church, and 
the Historic Faith, can alone face and deal with 
the grave problems which are perplexing us to- 
day, and that upon them alone the reconstruction 
of our shattered and shipwrecked civilization can 
be attempted. 

[165] 



The New Black Magic 

We have heard much in these days of the sup- 
posed failures of Christianity; but it would be 
more in accordance with the facts, as I have 
shown, if those who use such expressions spoke 
of the failures of a certain kind of Christianity. 
Catholicism manifestly is far from being a fail- 
ure. And, indeed, if we would form a true and 
just estimate of matters it is but necessary to 
endeavor to realize what the world would be 
without it today. 

The true Catholic Faith has brought us the 
only rational solution of the mystery and mean- 
ing of life; it has placed us in a right and true 
relation to God; it has solved for us the riddle 
of suffering and endowed it with a noble and ex- 
alted significance; it has brought us the forgive- 
ness of sin and the means of union with God; it 
provides us, in its sacramental institutions, with 
treasures of grace by means of which we are able 
to bear life's burdens and to fight its battles. It 
is a source of never-failing consolation to us in 
sorrow and sickness and in the hour of death. 
Millions of men and women, of all nations, are 
ready to bear testimony to the reality of these 
facts and experiences. 

But it must be evident that if the "New Revela- 
tion" be true, if Christ is not what we have be- 
lieved Him to be, if there never was an Atone- 

[ 166] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

ment for Sin and a consequent means of recon- 
cilation and union with God, our whole outlook 
on life will have to be changed, and the testimony 
of the best and noblest of men will have to be re- 
garded as untrustworthy and worthless. We 
shall have to reconstruct our entire moral and 
spiritu. 1 life. 

God, we are told by Sir Conan Doyle and his 
spirit-instructors, is so infinite that He is not even 
within the ken of the "higher" Spirits; as to 
Christ, the ideas respecting Him are so vague 
that it would be difficult to say who and what He 
really is. He cannot, in any case, be said to 
possess that divine authority which we attribute 
to Him. We cannot, therefore, be sure that He 
hears our prayers and is able to answer them. 
The good angels do not give any perceptible 
signs of their presence in connection with these 
manifestations and cannot, therefore, be sup- 
posed to be aiding us. We must, therefore, here- 
after "seek the truth from the dead" — the very 
thing so strictly forbidden us in both the Old and 
New Testaments — we must resort, for light and 
guidance, in earthly as well as in spiritual matters, 
to tipping tables and the automatic pencil, to the 
spirits of the ouija-board and the seance-room. 
This, it will and must be admitted, is the neces- 
sary and inevitable inference, for any logical 

[167] 



The New Black Magic 

mind that accepts the terms of the "New Revela- 
tion," and that thinks the matter out to its last 
and fullest conclusion. 

But can a greater piece of folly and of hopeless 
and utter absurdity be conceived? Are there 
really intelligent men and women so utterly de- 
void of common sense that they can face such an 
inference with equanimity ? Has the world gone 
so hopelessly mad that it has lost all sense of the 
true meaning and proportion of things? Let us 
try and picture to ourselves a world hereafter in 
which the seance, with the entranced medium, 
and the tipping table, is the ordinary and serious 
mode of seeking after truth and of obtaining 
guidance and direction in the affairs and com- 
plexities of life — where we are to learn what the 
aim and purpose of life really is, and how it is to 
be achieved. To those of us who are familiar 
with what goes on in the seance-room ; the phys- 
ical and moral effects on the medium and the sit- 
ters, the wearisome process of establishing "con- 
ditions," the lies and contradictions of the spirits, 
the frivolous waste of precious hours, the insati- 
able craving for further evidence and more 
seances, the neglect of all true and wholesome 
spiritual exercises — the picture is one to literally 
appall the imagination. 

One cannot find words strong enough to warn 
[i68] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

the unwary and to put them on their guard 
against the perils of such a cultivation of "the 
lure of the unseen." The path along which this 
"New Revelation" has so far travelled is strewn 
with the wrecks of happy homes, of ruined con- 
stitutions, of miserable and blighted lives. But, 
lest any one should imagine that I am overstating 
the seriousness of the situation, I will quote what 
an eminent English writer 37 has quite recently 
said on the subject in his comments on Doyle's 
and Lodge's books : 

"Let them (the public) beware; for three of 
my friends, men of eminence who really believe 
in Spiritualism, have told me that they have for- 
bidden the very name of it, or any allusion to it, 
to be mentioned in their homes, have forbidden 
their wives and children to touch it, as if it were 
a thing accursed. And why ? Because not being 
really known and explainable, it puts their minds 
on a rack; and by the 'Black Magic' which is 
always part of it, so often leads to insanity and 
death." 

In the preface of his book, Dr. Crozier writes : 

"Another revolution which the war has effected 

is that the Religion of Christ and the doctrines of 

the Church which were still sufficient to meet the 

37 Dr. John Beattie Crozier, LL.D., in "Last Words on Great 
Issues." 

[I6 9 ] 



The New Black Magic 

needs of sorrow-laden souls, are now giving 
place to a spiritualism of 'spooks' and 'mediums,' 
on whose scraggy and beggarly shake-down, not 
merely the bewildered, the stricken, the bereaved, 
are content to lie down in peace, calmly awaiting 
their death — but even the intellectuals as well. Is 
this not a strange topsy-turvydom ? And would 
it not indeed be a theme for comedy, were it not 
so pathetic a tragedy? For consider — that the 
very Christianity which when it came into the 
world, occupied itself largely in casting out these 
'spooks' and 'mediums,' these sorcerers and 
necromancers — that this Christianity, I say, 
should, in its decadence, have so lost itself and 
its hold on the minds of men, that these mediums 
from their superior pose and elevation, can now 
actually condescend to patronize it — going even 
so far as to suggest that if its old moribund leaves 
and branches could only be sprinkled by their 
healing waters, it would revive in all its pristine 
vigor; and, like the old and 'wappened widow' in 
Shakespeare's Tirnon' be spiced to the April day 
again! Is this not monstrous in this 'so-called' 
twentieth century? No wonder that Father 
Vaughan, representing the Roman Catholic 
Church, should in his disgust on seeing Prot- 
estants lying low under this degradation, feel in 
his cheek a blush of shame! To me, as an out- 

[170] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

sider, there seems, I confess, something in the 
continuous tradition of the old original Church 
after all!" 

Other leading and sensible men of our time, 
who may be credited with knowing something 
about the matter, have expressed themselves in a 
similar manner. Professor H. E. Armstrong, 
F.R.S., is emphatic in his condemnation. In a 
postscript to Mr. Edward Clodd's work, "If a 
man die shall he live again ?" written in refutation 
of "Raymond," the work by Sir Oliver Lodge, 
which is largely responsible for the present re- 
crudescence of necromancy, Prof. Armstrong 
says : 

"It appears to me to be a cumulative and force- 
ful gravamen against a movement every aspect 
of which is pernicious — pernicious alike to the 
prime movers and to the public ; one which, at all 
costs, in support of sanity of human outlook, we 
should seek to stamp out with every weapon at 
our command. . . . That neither the Church nor 
educated opinion should have had the courage, 
the sense of duty, to take real exception to its 
promulgation, cannot well be regarded otherwise 
than as a proof that we are living in a period of 
intellectual decadence." 

By "The Church," says Fr. Hudson, "Prof. 
Armstrong understands, of course, the Church of 

[171 3 



The New Black Magic 

England. If he were better informed he would 
be aware that almost simultaneously with the 
appearance of "Raymond" the Church renewed 
its condemnation of the movement which he 
rightly considers pernicious and so vehemently 
condemns." 38 

Professor Percy Gardner of Oxford, a non- 
Catholic like the two authors quoted, writes: 

"The necromancy of today depicts a future 
state of things as colorless and meaningless as 
are the lives of many comfortable Christians, 
without spiritual passion or ambition." 

But, looking away for the moment from the 
definitely religious and moral aspect of the mat- 
ter, while bearing in mind certain facts connected 
with spirit-intercourse which cannot very well be 
ignored, is there anything of solid value which 
the disciple of the new cult is likely to derive 
from the practice of his new religion ? 

1. If the practice be indulged in with a view to 
securing scientific certainty respecting the im- 
mortality of the human soul, the seeker will most 
certainly be disappointed. Such certainty cannot, 
logically, be deduced from the evidence furnished 
by spiritistic phenomena. In the first place, we 
can never be absolutely sure, from the very 

38 The text of the decree referred to will be found on page 203. 
[172] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

nature of the case, that the communicators are 
really the spirits of the dead. I have shown on 
what grounds grave doubt must be, and is, enter- 
tained by the most experienced experimenters 
on this point. The best evidence conceivable 
could never yield more than a mere probability, 
and such probability is attainable on other and 
far better grounds. 

But even if this were not the case, if it could 
be proved that the spirits of a certain low order 
of deceased human beings are, in some instances, 
the communicators, their manifestations could 
not prove more than survival of death. It could 
then still be urged that such survival might termi- 
nate after a time, when the vitality of the life- 
principle which has managed to escape the 
destruction of the body has spent itself and is 
exhausted. I had this forcibly brought home to 
me, some years ago, when a materialistic scientist, 
who had heard of my researches, called upon me 
in London and asked me to make him acquainted 
with my evidence. He maintained, after consid- 
ering this evidence, that even if all the facts pre- 
sented had to be accepted, they would not affect 
his scientific position. "It is not inconceivable," 
he said, "that the life-principle in man, carrying 
with it certain mental impressions and even a kind 
of individuality, survives the body for a time and 

[ 173] 



The New Black Magic 

is then reabsorbed in the universal or cosmic 
life." And I did not see, and have never seen 
since, how this contention can be satisfactorily 
controverted. 

It is to be admitted, moreover, that certain 
facts which psychical research has brought to 
light, could be made to support this theory. The 
spiritists admit that it is difficult for them to get 
in touch with spirits who have been many years 
on the other side. Sir Conan Doyle himself 
says: 39 "Communications usually come from 
those who have not long passed over and tend to 
grow fainter, as one would expect." This, of 
course, is interpreted by him as implying that the 
spirits, in the course of time, reach higher stages 
of development and proportionately lose touch 
with the earth-life ; but it will be seen that it also 
admits of the other interpretation. For a skep- 
tically inclined and cautious mind, therefore, 
even an established communication from the 
spirit-world is not likely to bring the certainty 
and consolation so eagerly desired. 

Immortality — an endless conscious existence 
of the individual soul — is the inevitable postulate 
of reason and reflection, when put to a right and 
proper use. With few exceptions it is the uni- 
versal and instinctive belief of mankind-— a be- 

39 The New Revelation. P. 72. 

[174] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

lief all the more remarkable since it persists in 
spite of its being opposed to all sensible appear- 
ances. The simplicity and immateriality of the 
human soul which leave it unaffected by the 
process of corruption, the preservation of per- 
sonal identity in spite of incessant bodily change, 
the craving for knowledge and happiness never 
fully attained in the present life, the circumstance 
that the universe is rational and that there must 
be underlying it a purpose and an aim which 
would not be obtained if the soul were annihilated 
and if the wrongs of life were not righted — virtue 
not rewarded and vice and sin not punished — all 
these are far more solid and substantial grounds 
for believing in the immorality of the soul than 
those which could possibly be furnished by the 
fugitive and deceptive phenomena of Spiritism. 
All true and accurate thinkers, in all times, have 
acknowledged this, and it is for this reason that 
the spiritistic phenomena, observed in the past, 
have never been given any prominence in the 
various scholastic arguments in defense of the 
doctrine of the immortality of the soul. It is evi- 
dent, therefore, that, in this respect, the "New 
Revelation" does not provide the reflecting mind 
with any really additional or superior evidence. 
It can only satisfy those who do not think very 
deeply about the matter and who are easily im- 

[175] 



The, New Black Magic 

pressed by the appearance of things. "It may 
well be asked," writes Dr. John D. Quackenbos, 40 
"if communications with the dead be lawful and 
fraught with satisfaction, would God have con- 
cealed from men so innocent a means of gratify- 
ing the most intense longing of human nature? 
The answer is — No! . . . The proof of immor- 
tality is not to be sought for in the vaporings of 
spiritism." 

2. If spiritistic practices be resorted to in 
order to ascertain the conditions and character 
of the other life, the inquirer will find himself 
equally disappointed. I have shown from actual 
experiences and from the statements of the spirits 
themselves that nothing certain and reliable can 
be ascertained in this respect. We look in vain 
for any kind of agreement or oneness of idea, on 
any single point of teaching, emanating from the 
spirit-spheres. All is confusion, and the incon- 
sistencies and contradictions with which we meet 
are sometimes altogether ridiculous in their char- 
acter. The communications conveyed through 
the respective mediums would seem to reflect and 
to express some latent belief or subjective impres- 
sion of the sensitive himself, rather than any 
objective truth, universally known and under- 
stood in the world of spirit and disclosed for the 

40 Body and Spirit. 

[I 7 6] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

enlightenment and moral advancement of man- 
kind. 

Sometimes these messages are nothing but the 
familiar jargon of the seance-room, delivered 
with a certain air of superior knowledge and in- 
sight, but wholly inconsistent in character and 
devoid of all credibility. Sir Oliver Lodge sug- 
gests that some of the lengthy communications 
of "Feda" (his medium's spirit-control) may have 
their origin in the medium's dream-conscious- 
ness; but he overlooks the fact that they come 
with the same credentials as any other message 
from Raymond or other discarnate spirits, and 
that if they are unreliable and imaginary, we have 
no reason for placing confidence in any spirit's 
description of the other life. 

"These wild utterances," wrote the critic of a 
similar work in the London Times, 41 "do not seem, 
as a rule, like revelations of the secrets of the 
prison-house, but rather like gibberings from a 
lunatic-asylum, peopled by inmates of vulgar be- 
haviour and of the lowest morals ; creatures that 
lie and cheat, give false names and unverifiable 
addresses." And even the spirits, communicating 
with each other in the spirit-spheres, do not seem 
to be of the same mind. A truly comical illus- 
tration of this fact is given us in an incident re- 

u July 9, 1908. 

[177 3 



The New Black Magic 

corded in a recent work by Dr. Carrington. It 
is the case of a soldier who had been killed by a 
German shell and who is taken by his spirit- 
brother to one of the "rest-halls," specially pre- 
pared for newly arrived pilgrims. He had been 
somewhat of a recluse in his earth-life and now 
reflects upon the mistakes made in that life. He 
describes the conditions and environments of his 
new life by means of automatic writing. But 
on returning to the rest-hall "a very decided cold 
douche" is awaiting him. He meets a messenger 
from a higher sphere who says to him : "Do you 
know that most of what you have conveyed to 
your friends at the matter-end of the line is quite 
illusory"? And he then suggests that the spirit- 
soldier had better live a little of the new life first 
before he talks about it to his friends on this side 
of the barrier. Can anything more grotesque 
and absurd, I would ask, be conceived? 

Commenting upon these spirit-messages and 
upon the utter impossibility of picking even the 
smallest grains of gold out of such a mass of 
worthless rubbish, Mr. Maeterlinck writes: 42 

"Beyond our last hour is it all bare and shape- 
less and dim? If it be so, let them (the spirits) 
tell us ; and the evidence of darkness will at least 
possess a grandeur that is all too absent from 

12 Life after Death. Fortnightly Review, Sept.-Oct, 1913. 

[178] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

these cross-examining methods. Of what use is 
it to die if all life's trivialities continue? Is it 
really worth while to have passed through the ter- 
rifying gorges which open on the eternal fields 
in order to remember that we had a great-uncle 
called Peter, or that our cousin Paul was afflicted 
with varicose veins and gastric complaint? . . . 
Without demanding a great miracle one would 
nevertheless think that we had a right to expect 
from a mind which nothing now enthralls some 
other discourse than that which it avoided when 
it was still subject to matter. . . . Why do they 
(the spirits) speak to us so seldom of the future? 
And for what reason, when they do venture upon 
it, are they mistaken with such disheartening 
regularity?" 

And in his work, 'The Unknown Guest," Mr. 
Maeterlinck writes : "They (the exponents of the 
spiritistic theory) see the dead crowding around 
us like wretched puppets, indissolubly attached 
to the insignificant scene of their death by the 
thousand little threads of insipid memories and 
infantile hobbies. They are supposed to be here, 
blocking up our homes, more abjectly human 
than if they were still alive, vague, inconsistent, 
garrulous, derelict, futile and idle, tossing hither 
and thither their desolate shadows which are be- 
ing slowly swallowed up by silence and oblivion, 

[179] 



The New Black Magic 

busying themselves incessantly with what no 
longer concerns them, but almost incapable of 
doing us a real service, so much so that, in short, 
they would end by persuading us that death 
serves no purpose, that it neither purifies nor ex- 
alts, that it brings no deliverance and that it is 
indeed a thing of terror and despair." 

3. Again if these occult practices be indulged 
in in order to obtain counsel and guidance in the 
ordinary affairs of human life, the inquirer will 
here, too, meet with disappointment, and indeed 
with worse than disappointment. I happen to 
have an exceptionally wide experience in this re- 
spect, by reason of the many communications 
from disillusioned spiritists which have been 
made to me in the course of the years, and from 
cases with which I have come in personal con- 
tact. Not the slightest reliance can be placed on 
any advice coming from this quarter. I have 
seen the most disastrous consequences resulting 
from following such advice. I know of two fami- 
lies in London, lifelong and ardent spiritualists, 
who were practically ruined by instructions re- 
specting money investments which were given 
them by their spirit-friends — these friends being 
in daily communication with them, and claiming 
to have made every possible inquiry before ten- 
dering the advice. 

[180] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

It is true I also know of one case in which the 
advice given resulted in the gaining of a very 
large sum of money; but it ended in the person, 
thus enriched, ruining his constitution soon after 
by the excessive use of alcohol and luxurious 
living. 

I also know of instances in which the advice 
given to young and inexperienced girls would 
have ended in moral disaster, had it been fol- 
lowed. It was their womanly instinct, happily 
remaining intact, which saved them from that 
disaster. But those of us who are acquainted 
with these occurrences have no difficulty in find- 
ing the true explanation of many a mysterious 
and inexplicable happening" in our day. Most 
confessors in the larger cities know what an 
amount of mischief is caused in the family life 
by obedience to directions received from these 
spirit-guides and by visits to the clairvoyants and 
writing-mediums. But a book would have to be 
written were one to collect and present the num- 
berless cases with which current literature and 
the records of the law-courts furnish us. A sin- 
gle application of common-sense should be more 
than sufficient to destroy the very foundation of 
the entire edifice of theories and illogical deduc- 
tions which has been erected upon these phenom- 
ena, were it not, as Mr. G. Chesterton says, "that 

[1S1] 



The New Black Magic 

there is nothing so uncommon, nowadays, as 
common-sense." 

It must be evident that if it were really within 
the power of these spirits to communicate to us 
information of real help and value in our social 
and family life, the spiritists and their mediums 
would be the first to benefit by it. We would ex- 
pect to find their family life to be the best regu- 
lated in the world, their daughters happily mar- 
ried and their sons well placed ; we would expect 
to find the mediums prosperous or at least in com- 
fortable circumstances. But, as a matter of fact, 
the very opposite is the case. I will quote what a 
disillusioned spiritist, 43 whose own life was a 
noted American trance medium for many years, 
has to say on the subject. In his work, Spiritual- 
ism Unveiled, he writes : 

"The extensive opportunity which I have had, 
and that, too, amongst the first-class of spiritual- 
ists, of learning its nature and results, I think will 
enable me to lay just claims to being a competent 
witness in the matter. I am afraid that what 
I have to say will offend many who are less ac- 
quainted with the phenomena than myself . . . 
but I write that the experienced may more fully 
comprehend the dangers attending it. I am fre- 
quently asked if I still believe in the phenomena 

43 Dr. B. F. Hatch. 

[182] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

of spiritualism. I answer Yes. I should deem 
it more than a waste of time to write about what 
does not exist. ... I have heard much of the 
improvement in individuals from a belief in spir- 
itualism. With such I have had no acquaint- 
ance. But I have known many whose integrity 
of character and uprightness of purpose rendered 
them worthy examples to all around, but who, 
on becoming mediums and giving up their indi- 
viduality, also gave up every sense of honor and 
decency. A less degree of severity in this re- 
mark will apply to a large class of mediums and 
believers. There are thousands of high-minded 
and intelligent spiritualists who will agree with 
me that it is no slander in saying that the incul- 
cation of no doctrine in this country (America) 
has ever shown such disastrous moral and social 
results as the spiritual theories. . . . With but 
little inquiry I have been able to count up over 
seventy mediums, most of whom have wholly 
abandoned their conjugal relations, others living 
with their paramours called 'affinities/ others in 
promiscuous adultery, and still others exchanged 
partners. Old men and women, who have passed 
the meridian of life, are not unfrequently the vic- 
tims of this hallucination." 

"The subject," says another writer, 44 "strange 

"Hubbel: Facts and Fancies in Spiritualism. 

[183] 



The New Black Magic 

to say, seemed to have the power of introducing 
discord in every family into which it entered, of 
arraying husband against wife in the divorce- 
court, and of producing all manner of domestic 
infelicity and sexual irregularities. This is a 
rather strange result of the belief that we are 
surrounded by the spirits of our beloved dead 
who see all we do." 

Those of my readers who are familiar with my 
earlier works will be acquainted with the abun- 
dant mass of evidence on this subject which is 
available, and a great deal of which is the result 
of personal experience and of a study of the 
published writings of spiritists and of scientific 
men of the saner sort. In its collective character 
it is overwhelming and should be sufficient to de- 
ter the most stable and well-balanced of minds 
from touching the unclean thing. 

Again it is known to all the world that all pub- 
lic mediums (except perhaps the few who have 
independent sources of income) are poor. They 
compete with one another, in their advertise- 
ments, in commending their gifts at the most 
moderate charges, business mediums claiming to 
have been the means of providing their clients 
with great wealth, while they themselves remain 
poor and are compelled to eke out a miserable ex- 
istence by these precarious means. They claim 

[184] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

to foretell the future and to guard their devotees 
against clearly-discerned bodily perils and sick- 
ness, but they cannot prevent so noted a defender 
of their cause as the late Mr. Stead from losing 
his life in a shipwreck, or to save numbers of 
their followers and consulters from unhappy al- 
liances, from suicide, and the asylum. Must we 
not conclude that those who, in spite of these ob- 
vious inconsistencies, believe in these spirits, and 
look to them for true guidance and enlighten- 
ment, have parted with every fragment of right 
judgment and common-sense? 

If it be asserted that the arguments which I 
have adduced tend to deprive sorrowing hearts 
of that consolation and assurance which spirit- 
istic phenomena are affording them at this time 
of anguish and pain, I reply that they are, on the 
contrary, calculated to save them from a disillu- 
sionment which is infallibly awaiting them. All 
my experiences go to prove that this disillusion- 
ment is bound to come sooner or later, and that 
then "their last state will be worse than their 
first." I have seen too many instances of this 
kind to entertain any doubt about the matter. I 
have the records of a case before me, in which the 
deception was successfully maintained for a pe- 
riod of five years, but in which the masquerading 
spirit finally himself confessed that he was not 

[185] 



The New Black Magic 

the person he had claimed to be. Such instances, 
in any case, are ample proof that certainty in this 
matter is never possible for the sorrowing heart. 
But these very contradictions, so characteristic 
of all spirit-messages, constitute one of the great- 
est perils for the infatuated spiritist and one of 
the greatest triumphs for the intelligences at the 
back of them. They result in a ceaseless consul- 
tation of all kinds of mediums, and in a running 
from one seance to another, in an incessant ques- 
tioning of the oracles, in the vain hope that better 
"conditions" will be secured, and that the fla- 
grant inconsistency will be explained. This ac- 
counts for the fact that the number of public 
mediums is increasing and flourishing to such an 
alarming extent that, in some of the big cities 
like London the police have been compelled to 
interfere. But, by this means, an increasing 
number of minds are rendered passive, the door 
of communication is being more widely opened, 
and these spirits are afforded facilities of 
more effectually invading and dominating the 
life of the world and of mankind. Never 
probably in all the history of the world has a 
greater danger threatened our moral and social 
life! 

The habitual consultation of the spirits on 
questions of life and death, finally, is a source of 

[186] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

endless mental unrest and disquietude. The very 
circumstance that the "higher" spirits give con- 
flicting accounts of the conditions of the other 
life and of man's present duties and obligations 
in this respect, prevent the mind from arriving 
at any settled religious conviction. And, as all 
men know, a true spiritual life cannot be built up 
on permanent doubt and uncertainty. We must 
have some fixed idea as to our true relation to 
God, and as to the duties which we owe to Him 
if we are to construct our life aright and if our 
prayers are to have any value and meaning for 
us. It is surely utterly absurd to maintain, in the 
words of Doyle, 45 that so far as Religion is con- 
cerned "the southern races will always demand 
what is less austere than the North, the West will 
always be more critical than the East," and that, 
on this principle of adaptation, a great stride can 
be made "toward religious peace and unity." 
Truth surely is truth, and if it has been given at 
all, it is authoritative and must be truth for one 
race as well as for another. Its acceptance or 
rejection, or its modification, cannot be made de- 
pendent upon peculiar national characteristics 
and mental requirements and tendencies. It can- 
not be true in the West, and untrue, or only par- 
tially true, in the East. It must be true always 
45 "The New Revelation." P. 52. 



The New Black Magic 

and everywhere and, indeed, it exists in order 
that the nations may conform themselves to it, 
not that they may make it conformable to their 
particular whims and fancies and their likes and 
dislikes. 

But have we not, in this lack of finality and 
certainty in the matter of all these new religions, 
in this "ever-learning yet never coming to a 
knowledge of the truth," the explanation of all 
the mental and religious unrest, and all the moral 
disorders which are so characteristic of our age 
and of which the disastrous consequences con- 
front us on every side? The "higher" men and 
women of our day are like ships without rudder 
and compass, tossed hither and thither by the 
turbulent waters of the ocean of life, lacking all 
character and stability, and utterly devoid of any 
clearly recognized aim and purpose in life. Man, 
clearly, was made for God and for a supernatural 
end, and the present life has no meaning at all 
unless it be the training ground on which he is 
to qualify for the attainment and enjoyment of 
that end. But this is utterly impossible, as all 
experience proves, if he has no fixed and perma- 
nent truth on which he can construct his life, and 
no settled principles by which his actions are to 
be guided and directed. "A holy man continueth 
in wisdom as the sun; but the fool is changed as 

[ 188] 



The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense 

the moon. 46 He that wavereth is like a wave of 
the sea which is moved and carried about by the 
wind ... a double-minded man is inconsistent 
in all his ways." 47 

Now let the reader compare all this mental 
tight-rope dancing, all this chasing after new and 
higher truths, all this vain seeking after light in 
quarters where it can never be found, with the 
clear and concise teachings of Christ Our Lord 
which admit of no compromise and toning down, 
which the best of men, in all ages and nations, 
have instinctively recognized to be the truth, and 
which, unless purposely distorted and perverted, 
infallibly introduce order and harmony, and 
peace and restfulness, into every human soul. 
Let him compare these mutually contradictory 
and conflicting systems of religion with the un- 
changing and unchangeable doctrines of the His- 
toric Church, which are daily bringing unspeak- 
able peace and consolation to millions of souls in 
every part of this wide earth, which sustain and 
stay the soul in life and solace it in death, and on 
which alone a true and enduring spiritual life can 
be built up. Can an intelligent man, who has 
weighed the matter fully and carefully, in all its 
bearings — can he hesitate in his choice? Must 

* 6 Eccles.: XXVII, 12. 
* ; St. James I, 6-8. 

[I8 9 ] 



The New Black Magic 

not common-sense and reason unite in declaring 
that these new revelations so-called are wholly 
inconsistent with our instinctive ideas of the dig- 
nity, justice and holiness of God, and offensive 
to our religious feelings and our common-sense? 



[ 190] 



VIII 
THE INEVITABLE INFERENCE 



THE INEVITABLE INFERENCE 

If we now sum up the evidence which has been 
gathered together from many sources and from 
various points of view and consider it fully and 
fairly, as a whole, and in all its bearings, we are 
literally driven to the conclusion that the "New 
Revelation," ushered in by spirit-messages, by 
the entranced medium, the tipping-table, and the 
automatic pencil, is a gigantic delusion imposed 
upon a world which has become estranged from 
Christ and lapsed into paganism. It is a rever- 
sion to practices and beliefs which are as old as 
the world, and which inquiry has shown to be a 
characteristic of the pagan civilizations. The 
highest probability is that these spirits, who come 
to us in the forms and with the voices of our dead, 
are not really spirits of the dead at all, but are 
some of those fallen angels 48 of which the true 
Revelation speaks and which are known to have 
come with similar pretences and under identical 
disguises in pre-Christian times. They are repre- 
sentatives of that hostile spirit-world which has, 
from the beginning of time, opposed itself to 

48 See the interesting work on this subject, by Rev. A. M. 
Lepicier, O.S.M. "The Unseen World." 

[193] 



The New Black Magic 

man's highest interests and to the true moral 
and spiritual progress of the human race. Their 
activities were checked and paralyzed when 
Christ appeared in the world, and wherever His 
Divine authority was acknowledged and obeyed 
— where men continued to live under the protect- 
ing power of His true Church and her Sacra- 
ments. 

The phenomena, attending the ushering in of 
this "New Revelation" and, in some respects re- 
sembling those recorded in the New Testament, 
are not identical with them in their origin and 
character, but are really travesties or caricatures 
of them — bad imitations, staged, beyond doubt, 
with the intent of deceiving and misleading the 
unwary. The circumstance that these phenom- 
ena and teachings meet with such ready accept- 
ance and belief is due to a variety of very ob- 
vious causes, the chief of which is the state of 
disorder and anarchy which reigns in almost 
every sphere of our modern life, and which is 
causing the distressed mind of man to be thrown 
hither and thither in its search after truth, and 
in its effort to find some sort of convenient resting 
place for the soul. Man, somehow, cannot get 
on very long without some kind of religion, and 
when he rebels against and ultimately rejects the 
one authoritatively revealed to him, he goes on a 

[ 194 ] 



The Inevitable Inference 

search for some attractive-looking substitute and 
fashions a religion for himself and after his own 
heart. 

In the non-Catholic religious sphere, therefore, 
the outlook is a peculiarly distressful and dis- 
heartening one. The conflict of creeds, the in- 
cessant wrangling over disputed points of doc- 
trine, the bold negative assertions of rationalistic 
Bible critics have undermined belief in the truth 
and authority of the Sacred Scriptures and have 
estranged thousands from the religion of Jesus 
Christ — driven them into the arms of one or 
other of those many man-made religions which 
have sprung up like mushrooms all around us. 
With numerous others the effect has been to cre- 
ate that state of crass indifference to all matters 
of Religion which is destructive to any kind of 
exalted moral or spiritual life. 

In the scientific and intellectual sphere, similar 
disintegrating influences, as we have seen, have 
been and are at work. On the materialistic side, 
the speculative theories of individual minds, 
boldly put forth as the sure findings of science, 
have shaken the very foundations of revealed, 
and indeed, of natural Religion, and have under- 
mined any lingering belief in the supremacy of 
the human conscience and in the responsibility 
of the soul before God. On the spiritistic side 

[195] 



The New Black Magic 

there is, as we have likewise seen, a reversion to 
pagan practices and a substitution of the teaching 
of spirits for the teachings of the Spirit of God. 

In the social and material sphere, forces are in 
operation which are fatal to all religious belief 
and practice, and to the cultivation of any kind 
of soul-life. The interests and energies of the 
mind are solely and exclusively directed to the 
achievement of material or social success, to vic- 
tory in that struggle of life which is daily be- 
coming fiercer and more absorbing, and to the 
securing of a mode of life which tends to crowd 
out all higher considerations and all nobler in- 
terests. 

And even though it be abundantly manifest 
from the existing state of the world that the 
civilization which has been built up upon these 
material forces has broken down utterly and is 
in a state of decadence, there is as yet no very 
perceptible indication that the fact is fully recog- 
nized and that the true causes are discerned. 

It is in this world of conflicting beliefs, of an- 
tagonistic forces, of ceaseless material effort, 
that the doctrines of spiritism meet, as we might 
have expected, with ready acceptance. They 
adapt themselves, in a marvelous manner, to the 
prevailing tendencies of thought — to the Zeit- 
geist, and, while retaining some semblance of the 

[ 196 ] 



The Inevitable Inference 

Christian Religion, they make it possible for a 
man to gratify all his desires and ambitions, and 
to eliminate from his life the inconvenient and 
hindering claims of God and of the soul. 

They enable him to make that judicious com- 
promise between the world and God which is so 
dear to the human heart, and to rest content in 
the assurance that, however perverse and unsat- 
isfactory his life may have been, there is nothing 
much that can happen to him in the after-life, 
since there all wrongs can be righted and all the 
crooked things be made straight. 

Now when we realize the fact that the true His- 
toric Christ and the true Historic Church con- 
stitute today the one loud and living protest 
against this anarchical state of things and against 
these perverse views of life, we come to under- 
stand why it is that the doctrine of the divinity 
of Christ is so strenuously and universally denied 
by the spirits of the seance-room and of the "New 
Revelation." With the rejection of this truth the 
world, strictly speaking, ceases to be Christian, 
separates itself from the supernatural order, and 
reverts to a state of pure nature. And, in this 
state of pure nature, there is provided for these 
spirits a wide and fruitful field of operation. 

When the ancient Roman world was in a state 
of decadence, it was the divine impulse, emanat- 

[i97] 



The New Black Magic 

ing from the Divine Christ, which infused new 
life into that world and transformed and regen- 
erated it. It was the Divine Christ Who laid the 
foundations of a new order, deep and strong, 
in the awakened souls and consciences of men. 
It was from Him — from God Incarnate — that the 
new life- forces flowed into that corrupt and de- 
caying world. It was for this truth, clearly dis- 
cerned by illumined souls, that the best of men 
suffered, and bled, and died. It was by means 
of His Church and her valid Sacraments that 
Christ continued to act upon the world through- 
out the long succeeding ages of struggle and of 
conflict. These are facts of history which no 
right-minded man and no rightly instructed stu- 
dent of history can deny. But if this be true, it 
must also be true that the forces which would re- 
move this truth from the life of man must be 
forces antagonistic to God, and inimical to the 
highest interests of mankind. 

Some may comfort themselves with the reflec- 
tion that they mean to honor and obey the Christ 
which the "New Revelation" is substituting for 
the Christ of History — that they will not cease to 
be Christians. But they fail to take account of 
what this historic doctrine really means and what 
human nature has been, and will most assuredly 
become again, without it. Man can never be 

[198] 



The Inevitable Inference 

made permanently obedient to a teacher who, in 
spite of his admitted perfections, is purely hu- 
man — a created being of some kind like ourselves. 
He will, sooner or later, throw off his allegiance 
to him and assign him a place such as he assigns 
to all other great world teachers. He will find 
his laws inconvenient, and will ask himself: 
What, if he is a created being like myself, does 
he after all know more than I know — why should 
I conform nryself to his law ? He will cease to be 
a disciple and become a critic. A.11 experience 
amply demonstrates this. 

The Historic Christ comes with divine and 
therefore binding authority. His laws are the 
laws of God. They cannot, without imperiling 
the soul, be disobeyed. He comes as the Source 
and Author of a new and supernatural order, in 
which divine and supernatural forces are in op- 
eration, by means of which the soul is regener- 
ated and elevated and spiritualized and made fit 
for a life above nature and union with God. It 
will be seen that these respective views lead to 
mutually conflicting conceptions of the world- 
order and of Christianity, and that they cannot 
by any chance be reconciled. 

To some people the contention that these mys- 
terious spirits are not the spirits of the dead but 
fallen angels may at first sight seem bizarre and 

[199] 



The New Black Magic 

far-fetched; but I would draw their attention to 
the fact that even thoughtful spiritists, regard- 
ing the matter from a purely experimental point 
of view, have come to this conclusion and have 
uttered words of warning to the public. 

"For my own part," writes Sir Wm. Barrett, a 
former President of the Society for Psychical 
Research, in a work already mentioned, "it seems 
not improbable that the bulk if not the whole of 
the physical manifestations witnessed in a spirit- 
istic seance are the product of human-like but not 
really human intelligences. ... It seems to me 
that the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Ephe- 
sians, points to a race of spiritual creatures — but 
of a malignant type when he speaks of beings, 
not made of flesh and blood, inhabiting the air 
around us and able injuriously to affect man- 
kind." 

In his criticism of a work on psychology by a 
foreign savant, Dr. Hereward Carrington, of 
whom the late Professor James, of Harvard, 
spoke to me with keen appreciation and whom he 
regarded as one of the best-informed and most 
open-minded of psychical researchers, wrote as 
follows: "When I wrote my book, The Coming 
Science, some years ago, I contended (pp. 59-78) 
that there was really no good first-hand evidence 
that spiritistic practices induced abnormal and 

[ 200 ] 



The Inevitable Inference 

morbid states and conditions to the extent usu- 
ally supposed. Further experiences have caused 
me to change that opinion. I now believe that 
the danger of spiritistic practices is very great, 
and I think that this aspect of the problem is one 
that should be more widely discussed and more 
attention should be given to it by members of the 
Society for Psychical Research. The recent writ- 
ings of Viollet and Mr. J. Godfrey Raupert 
should be more widely known. But it is probable 
that all these books would not have influenced 
me had I not seen several examples of such detri- 
mental influence myself — cases of delusion, in- 
sanity and all the horrors of obsession. 

"Those who deny the reality of these facts, 
those who treat the whole problem as a joke, re- 
gard planch ette as a toy and deny the reality of 
powers and influences which work unseen, should 
observe the effects of some of the spiritistic mani- 
fesations. They would no longer, I imagine, 
scoff at that investigation and be tempted to call 
all mediums frauds, but would be inclined to admit 
that there is a true terror of the dark, and that 
there are 'principalities and powers' with which 
we, in our ignorance, toy, without knowing and 
realizing the frightful consequences which may 
result from this tampering with the unseen 
world." 

[ 201 ] 



The New Black Magic 

"There are more plausible reasons than many 
imagine," wrote Mr. Dale Owen, a spiritist, 49 
"for the opinion entertained by some able men, 
Protestants as well as Catholics, that the com- 
munications in question come from the powers 
of darkness and that we are entering on 
the first steps of a career of demoniac mani- 
festations the issues of which men cannot con- 
jecture." 

These are weighty and significant words 
when we bear in mind the quarter from 
which they emanate. They are surely cal- 
culated to arrest the attention of even those 
who are most infatuated with the plausible and 
seemingly reasonable contentions of the "New 
Revelation." 

I cannot, then, in conclusion, and in full view 
of all the facts of the case, better sum up the en- 
tire argument of this book than in the form in 
which I have summed it up at the end of my re- 
cently published pamphlet: 50 

The occult Phenomena, evoked and observed 
and studied in modem times, are no discoveries 
by science of hidden but normal powers in man 
which may be legitimately utilized and cultivated, 

"Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. P. 38. 
50 Spiritistic Phenomena and their Interpretation, published at 
682 Main St., Buffalo, N. Y. Incl. postage, 25 cents. 

[ 202 ] 



The Inevitable Inference 

and by means of which the spirits of the dead can 
be made to furnish proof of their survival, and 
by which they can impart useful knowledge to the 
world. Their induction is a revival, in modem 
form, of that ancient Necromancy and Black 
Magic, which was and is today practiced by most 
uncivilized or partially civilized races, and which, 
both the legislators of the Jewish race and the 
teachings of Christ and of the Christian Church, 
in every age, and in the most emphatic terms, rig- 
idly condemned. 

It is a movement of thought, in violent and 
bitter antagonism to the Revealed, Supernatural 
Truths of Christianity, tending to separate the 
human soul from the supernatural order and re- 
ducing it to that state of helplessness and natu- 
ralism from which Christ came to set it free. 

Its appearance, in our time, is a literal and 
startling fulfillment of remarkable zvords of 
prophecy and zvarning, uttered nearly two thou- 
sand years ago. 

The text of the Decree of the Holy Office, 
dated April 27, 1917, runs as follows: 

"Question. — Whether it is allowable to assist 
at spiritistic communications or manifestations 
whatsoever, even though they bear the appearance 
of being honest and pious, through a medium as 

[203] 



The New Black Magic 

he is called, or without him, and whether hypno- 
tism is used or not, either by interrogating souls 
or spirits, or hearing their answers, or else by 
simply looking on, although one tacitly or ex- 
pressly protests that he does not wish to have 
anything to do with evil spirits. The answer is 
in the negative all round." 



[ 2 °4 ] 



IX 



THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OUIJA- 
BOARD 



THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OUIJA- 
BOARD* 

The recent revival of spiritistic practices in all 
parts of the world is leading increasing numbers 
of persons to try experiments with the ouija- 
board — a simple and seemingly harmless contriv- 
ance, by means of which messages are often ob- 
tained which have all the appearance of coming 
from the spirits of the dead. So rapidly has this 
practice spread in this country that there are 
few families today who have not come in touch 
with these experiments in one way or another 
and who have not at least heard of the startling 
communications which, in many instances, have 
been elicited from the little board. 

The consequence is that reflecting persons 
everywhere are asking questions respecting the 
matter which are calling for an answer, and those 
of us who, by reason of prolonged and painstak- 
ing investigation, are more intimately acquainted 
with the subject, cannot but feel that it is of the 
utmost importance that the answer which is given 
to these questions should be an adequate and cor- 
rect one. 

For practical purposes we may divide the ex- 

*In order to make this essay a separate and consistent whole, 
the repetition of a few references was unavoidable. 

[207] 



The New Black Magic 

perimenters with the ouija-board and similar con- 
trivances into two classes of persons. Those of 
the first class look upon the little board purely as 
a toy, and as a means of amusement and enter- 
tainment. While fully admitting that the mes- 
sages obtained under their hand are often very 
strange and surprising and quite contrary to 
what might be expected, they nevertheless hold 
that a natural explanation can and will no doubt 
be found for them. Such persons have observed 
how often a message received is foolish and silly, 
how frequently the answer given to a question 
is false or at least highly improbable, and in how 
many instances the statements made by the board 
are manifestly mere echoes or reflections of their 
own thoughts, or the presentation of incidents 
long forgotten but nevertheless stowed away in 
their memories. 

To the second class belong many intelligent 
persons who have studied the matter more closely 
and who have become entirely convinced that the 
natural explanation does not cover all the facts 
of the case, and that in many instances at least 
an external and independent mind must be ad- 
mitted to be at work in connection with the trans- 
mission of the messages. In confirmation of this 
belief they point to the nature and content of 
some of the messages: the display of informa- 

[208] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

tion, often intimate and accurate, which is known 
to be only in the mind of the experimenter and 
of some person deceased, a knowledge of events 
and circumstances connected with persons and 
places at a distance and on inquiry found to be 
correct, the incessant emphatic assertion of the 
board itself that it is moved by the surviving 
spirit of some deceased human being. 

Now the question which is everywhere being 
asked is: "How are these conflicting views and 
experiences to be reconciled? What is really the 
truth about the matter ?" 

In reply to these questions it may be said at 
once that both views are correct in a sense. 

The scientific experiments of many years, in 
many countries, and carried on under strict test 
conditions, have shown conclusively what the 
process is which is at work in the eliciting of these 
mysterious messages and how their source and 
origin can be determined. 

We have to recognize two clearly established 
facts : 

1. Recent psychological research has demon- 
strated that the human mind is a far more com- 
plex and intricate organism than was at one time 
supposed. A very great part of its operations is 
what is termed subconscious, lying below the 
threshold of the ordinary conscious working 

[209] 



The New Black Magic 

mind. This subconscious part of the mind may 
be regarded as a kind of mental storehouse or 
registry, for in it are stored up and recorded, 
accurately and permanently, all the complex and 
many-sided experiences of our life. There is, 
strictly speaking, nothing, from our childhood 
upwards, no impression received, no word heard 
or uttered, no picture looked at, no occurrence or 
incident, no feeling or emotion, of which a rec- 
ord is not preserved in the secret recesses of the 
subconscious mind, however unable the normal 
working mind may be to recall them. It is only in 
dream states, or in abnormal conditions of mind, 
such as hypnosis or trance, that there occurs what 
is called a subconscious "uprush" and that we 
become aware of the complexity of our mental 
nature and of the extent of our possessions. 

"We should not overlook the fact," writes the 
Boston psychologist, Dr. Morton Prince, "that 
among mental experiences are those of the inner 
as well as the outer life. To the former belong 
the hopes and aspirations, the regrets, the fears, 
the doubts, the self-communings and wrestlings 
with self, the wishes, the loves, the hates, all that 
we are not willing to give to the outer world and 
all that we would forget and would strive not to 
admit to ourselves. 51 All this inner life belongs 

"The Unconscious. P. 85. 

[2IO] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

to our experience and is subject to the same laws 
of conservation." 

2. The second fact which we have to recognize 
and keep in mind is that experiments have shown 
that in proportion as the activities of the con- 
scious working mind are moderated and a state 
of passivity is induced, this subconscious part 
of the mind begins to act more freely and, after 
a time, -automatically, and without the conscious 
co-operation of the experimenter, to yield up some 
of its contents. And the normal mind, having in 
its state of passivity no power of selection or con- 
trol over the material thus projected by the sub- 
conscious mind, the latter acts in a most hap- 
hazard and disorderly manner, in many instances 
projecting things most amazing and unexpected 
and unrecognizable by the normal mind. Care- 
fully conducted experiments, however, and a 
rigid scrutiny of the life-history of the experi- 
menter and of the contents of the messages re- 
ceived have also shown that, as this passive state 
of the mind is increasingly developed and culti- 
vated by frequent experiments, a door is gradu- 
ally opened through which it is possible for an 
external intelligence or spirit to invade the mind 
and to gain access to the contents of this well- 
furnished subconscious storehouse. 

[211] 



The New Black Magic 

It would not be possible, in a brief paper of this 
kind, to give all the evidence in support of this 
assertion. I can but state here that all the best 
experimenters have come to this conclusion and 
that the fact can today only be doubted by those 
who have no accurate knowledge of the subject, 
whose own experiences have never carried them 
beyond the subconscious stage, or who are pre- 
disposed against belief in a spirit-world. The 
most skeptical person, least inclined to believe in 
spirit-activity in connection with these experi- 
ments will, on reflection, be constrained to admit 
that an external mind must be admitted to be at 
work where an incident is related by the board 
which is taking place at a distance and the truth 
of which is established on inquiry, or when a 
message is conveyed in a language which the ex- 
perimenter has never learnt and which, on being 
translated, is found to be consistent and intel- 
ligible. And, needless to say, many such mes- 
sages, some of them far more wonderful, have 
been received by means of automatic writing in 
all parts of the world. 

Now it is in the clear recognition and applica- 
tion of these two facts stated that the solution of 
the problem presented by the ouija-board is to 
be found. 

All depends on the peculiar mental condition of 

[212] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

the experimenter. At the beginning of the ex- 
periment, and before the mind has attained any 
great degree of passivity, the messages may be 
wholly normal, the slightly awakened subcon- 
scious mind becoming active and automatically 
and disconnectedly communicating some of the 
contents of its storehouse through the little 
board or pencil. It may even falsely claim to be 
an independent personality — the spirit of a de- 
ceased friend or relative, especially if the experi- 
menter strongly inclines to this belief and uncon- 
sciously suggests it to the subconscious mind. 
By far the larger proportion of the amusing 
messages and answers to questions with which we 
are all familiar are received where this moderate 
degree of passivity has been attained and where, 
as a consequence, the experimenter has no sus- 
picion of peril or of being on dangerous ground. 
The board may make a flippant joke, consistent 
with the peculiar temperament of the experi- 
menter, it may cause surprise by telling the age 
and other particulars, unknown to the others, of a 
person present; it may perform a variety of feats 
causing the greatest possible amazement. And 
an independent intelligence may, of course, be 
connected with the production from the very be- 
ginning. But so long as the statements made con- 
tain no matter foreign to the mind of the experi- 

[213] 



The New Black Magic 

menfer and no answer to a question which might 
not have been projected from the subconscious 
storehouse, there is no valid reason for assuming 
the presence of an outside intelligence. 

In proportion, however, as these experiments 
are continued and as the mind becomes more pas- 
sive and lethargic, the phenomenon begins to 
change its character and imperceptibly to pass 
from the natural into the preternatural. While 
subconscious automatic activity still continues, 
a message is jerked in here and there which is of 
a startling character and which is often seen at 
once to be no part of the experimenter's own 
mental outfit. Events taking place at a distance 
are accurately reported and commented upon. 
Disclosures are made respecting the character 
and doings and intimate personal affairs of per- 
sons not known to the experimenter. Messages 
are given, clearly and conclusively indicating 
knowledge and information wholly beyond the 
reach of the writer's own mind. And they are 
conveyed in a form and manner suggesting the 
presence of a critical and observant mind and of 
a judgment quite at variance with that of the 
experimenter. 

When, in view of such astonishing communica- 
tions, further questions are asked, the answer is 
generally to the effect that the spirit of some de- 

[214] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

ceased friend or relative of the experimenter is 
present, that he has discovered this simple means 
of communication and that he is anxious to cul- 
tivate the intercourse thus established for the 
benefit of the experimenter and the human race 
at large. For is it not a blessing of the highest 
order, it is urged, to obtain evidence that the dear 
departed dead are certainly alive and are all 
around us, and is it not perfectly lawful for us 
to receive from them advice and direction, not 
only as regards some of the greater problems of 
life, but also respecting our more immediate tem- 
poral concerns and anxieties? After a while 
instruction is generally given how a greater de- 
gree of passivity can be attained and how this 
mode of intercourse between the worlds seen 
and unseen can be made much more perfect and 
profitable. 

The experimenter, fascinated by these com- 
munications, and convinced that he has come 
upon a great and valuable discover}'-, readily 
adopts the advice given and resorts to the ouija- 
board habitually and systematically. Any doubt 
expressed by others as to the true source of the 
messages or the character and integrity of the 
spirits operating, is brushed aside with a smile 
of contempt, seeing that the messages breathe 
nothing but kindness and benevolence and that 

[215] 



The New Black Magic 

harm cannot be expected to be worked by a de- 
ceased mother or sister or friend. 

It is admitted, then, that while much ouija or 
planchette writing is automatic and natural, in- 
tercourse with spirits is and can nevertheless be 
established by these means. Difficult as this con- 
clusion may appear to some minds, it is never- 
theless certain that, in view of the abundant evi- 
dence, any other explanation would present 
greater and indeed insuperable difficulties. The 
further and all important question, therefore, 
which presents itself is : Is the claim justified and 
tenable that the spirits thus communicating are 
in reality the spirits of the dead? May we ac- 
cept and credit the testimony which they give re- 
specting themselves ? 

My reply to this question is that all the facts, 
so far ascertained, not only go to disprove this 
claim, but that there are in this belief and in these 
practices grave dangers, mental, moral and phys- 
ical, for the experimenter. 

In support of this statement I would urge upon 
the reader the following consideration : 

Long-continued and carefully conducted ex- 
periments have shown that : 

1. It has never been found possible to conclu- 
sively identify the particular spirit communicat- 
ing. 

[216] 



Ti.e Truth About the Ouija-Board 

The inexperienced experimenter will, of course, 
jump to the conclusion that a deceased mother 
or sister is present because the spirit making the 
claim is in possession of knowledge of an inti- 
mate character, can speak consistently and famil- 
iarly of the deceased mother's past earth-life, can 
mention little peculiar incidents or traits of char- 
acter and of temperament not known outside the 
family circle. But all such display of intimate 
knowledge cannot be regarded as evidence of 
identity today. The very circumstance that such 
facts are recognized by the person to whom they 
are presented proves that they are contained in 
that person's memory and that they are therefore 
accessible to and at the service of a spirit invad- 
ing the passive mind. And the same applies to 
handwriting, to peculiarities of expression, to 
anything and everything that the experimenter 
recognizes as characteristic of the person who 
claims to be present. Experiments have shown 
that even a hypnotized person can accurately 
imitate any handwriting with which he may have 
become acquainted during his life, even though 
he may be unable to accomplish this in a normal 
state. And, in automatic writing, the process is 
identical except that the operator is not the sub- 
conscious mind but a spirit. Instances are often 
recorded in which some deceased person, quite 

[217] 



The New Black Magic 

unknown to the experimenter, announces nis pres- 
ence and for the purpose of identification, gives 
the name he bore in his supposed past earth-life, 
the mode and place of his death, and other similar 
and striking particulars. And it is often found 
that such a statement is correct even in detail. 
But this, too, is no evidence at all of identity, since 
we read in the newspapers of strangers dying in 
certain places and under certain conditions every 
day, and even though our interest be of the most 
superficial and passing character, the subcon- 
scious mind registers the fact. And the records 
of spiritism testify that it is an easy thing for 
these mysterious spirits to extract such infor- 
mation from the subconscious mind and thus to 
dramatize and impersonate such deceased per- 
sonalities. There is abundant proof, too, to show 
that they can, under given conditions, extract in- 
formation from distant minds, with whom the ex- 
perimenter is in some kind of rapport, and from 
books and letters and other extant sources of in- 
formation. But that these spirits are not the 
individuals they claim to be is evident from the 
fact that, in the manipulation of the information 
thus gathered, they are apt to make the most dis- 
astrous mistakes, fitting into the life-history of a 
wife what belongs to that of a mother, exhibiting 
ignorance of matters which the deceased person 

[218] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

would above all other things have cause to re- 
member, and involving themselves, upon being 
questioned, in the most hopeless contradictions. 

We have cases on record in which they have 
boastfully admitted their trickery when found 
out, and in which they have declared that they 
have by means of this "mind tapping" of foolish 
persons been able almost to work miracles. 

Some years ago I had myself a striking expe- 
rience of this kind, the spirit for many months 
claiming to be a deceased friend of mine and fur- 
nishing many remarkable proofs of his identity. 
Upon being discovered in a manifest contradic- 
tion and falsehood, however, and charged in the 
name of God to reveal the true source of his in- 
formation, he declared that he had got it all out 
of our own silly "thought-boxes," it being pos- 
sible for him to read the contents of the passive 
mind with the same ease with which we read a 
book or a newspaper. 

It will be seen that, with such facts before us 
and with such possibilities on the part of the 
spirits, one could not under the most favorable 
circumstances be sure that the spirit communicat- 
ing is what it claims to be. Many high authori- 
ties, confirming the accuracy of this statement, 
might be quoted. I will here, for brevity's sake, 
content myself with only one, the French astron- 

[219] 



The New Black Magic 

omer, Professor Flammarion, who has been a 
painstaking student of the phenomena for many 
years. He writes 52 : "As to beings different from 
ourselves — what may their nature be? Of this 
we cannot have any idea: Souls of the dead? 
This is far from being demonstrated. The innu- 
merable observations which I have collected, dur- 
ing more than forty years, all prove to me the 
contrary. No satisfactory identification has been 
made." 

That the spirits of the ouija-board are not our 
departed relatives and friends, is, secondly, evi- 
dent from that fact that 

2. Their messages are for the most part frivo- 
lous and contradictory and intellectually worth- 
less. 

There is in the minds of all men a natural and 
instinctive awe of anything relating to the after- 
life of the departed. Whatever our religious 
views may be, we know that their trial time is 
past, that, with the loss of the body, they have en- 
tered upon a state of life in which the little trivi- 
alities of the earth-life cannot count any longer, 
but in which they are inevitably reaping the fruit 
of their moral and spiritual achievements or neg- 
lects. In view of this fact one is amazed to find 
that these spirits, claiming to be our surviving 

82 Mysterious Psychic Forces. P. 436. 
[220 ] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

friends, either tell us nothing- at all of any value 
respecting the after-life, or involve themselves, 
when they attempt to do so, in the most hopeless 
contraditions, one spirit denying what the other 
emphatically asserts. We find them concerning 
themselves chiefly with the most silly and fool- 
ish affairs of the present life, telling us that John 
is probably suffering from kidney trouble, that 
Mary has lost her old brooch and that aunt 
Emma's husband is not very kind to her, and 
similar childish twaddle in which the deceased 
was never known to indulge while in the body. 

In many instances they presume to give advice 
on the conduct of the affairs of our public or 
family life, sometimes displaying an amount of 
accurate and intimate knowledge which is aston- 
ishing, and there are instances on record in which 
such advice has been found to be good and accept- 
able in the initial stages of the experiment. But, 
in the course of time, and when confidence and 
obedience have been secured, such counsel is apt 
to change its character, causing, if adopted, ter- 
rible disorder in the home and family life. In 
many instances it is given by hint and suggestion 
rather than by definite and explicit statement, the 
spirit thus cautiously providing for himself a 
way of escape from possible entanglements. I 
have the report of numerous cases in which the 

[221] 



The New Black Magic 

directions drawn from the contemptible little 
board have separated husband from wife, a 
mother from her children, friends from friends, 
causing an endless amount of misery and suffer- 
ing. It is, alas! in most instances only when it 
is too late, when the mischief is done, that the 
real mischief-maker is discovered and the truth 
is recognized. It is a most difficult and some- 
times quite a hopeless task to reason with a mind 
which has passed under spirit-control and which, 
by reason of that control, has lost the power of 
judging fairly and squarely. 

And it need hardly be pointed out that the mes- 
sages bearing on matters of religion are equally 
worthless and unreliable. For the most part they 
are clothed in stately language, implying the pres- 
ence of a superior and exalted mind, but their 
contents are either empty platitudes or adapta- 
tions to the thoughts and leanings which the 
spirit perceives to predominate in the mind on 
which it is operating. They are manifestly never 
true presentations of the real state of things as 
it is on the other side of life. 

A spirit, striving to gain the confidence of his 
victim, will be Catholic with a Catholic, Unitar- 
ian with a Unitarian, even a Nihilist and Anar- 
chist where such leanings are seen to prevail. It 
will defend and declare the reasonableness of any 

[ 222 ] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

absurd fad or belief that may be characteristic 
of the inquirer. 

When trust and confidence have been secured 
the spirit will slowly begin to undermine any true 
Christian foundation that may exist, deny the 
divinity of Christ, the authority of conscience, 
the responsibility of human life, and the reality 
of a judgment to come. It will feed the mind 
on empty platitudes, very acceptable to the nat- 
ural man, but ultimately contradictory of the very 
fundamental truths of the Christian Religion. 

The very circumstance, known to all the 
world, that those who embrace Spiritism always 
cease to profess Historic Christianity, in any 
form, is in itself ample proof in support of this 
statement. 

"The cultivation of these entities to religion," 
writes a thoughtful student of the subject, 53 "in- 
cludes the practical abolition of the Ten Com- 
mandments, the introduction of revolting here- 
sies into Christianity, and the propagation of 
heathenism and atheism. All that we know of 
disembodied intelligences is that they are intel- 
lectually contemptible and that their influence 
makes for the destruction of religion and moral- 
ity." 

But perhaps the most conclusive proof that 

M Occultism in Psychical Research. 
[223] 



The New Black Magic 

these spirits, communicating by automatic writ- 
ing, are evil and not what they claim to be is, 
thirdly, to be found in 

3. The effect, physical, moral and mental, 
which these practices are known to have upon the 
experimenter. It would be necessary for one to 
write a book were one to attempt to present the 
conclusive and abundant evidence which is avail- 
able on this point. Striking testimony has been 
given in recent years by many scientific students 
of the subject of the saner sort, and this testi- 
mony is confirmed by the statements of numbers 
of disillusioned spiritists. I can here but briefly 
state the facts, but what I am stating is based 
upon the observations and personal experiences 
of many years and upon communications, often 
of a private and delicate character, which have 
reached me in the course of these years. Many 
of these reports are painful in the extreme. 

The facts briefly stated are these: 

Persons habitually and systematically using 
the ouija or planchette board, or similar auto- 
matic devices for obtaining spirit messages, ex- 
perience, after a time, a peculiar condition of las- 
situde and exhaustion — in many instances accom- 
panied by severe pain at the top of the spine and 
gradually spreading over the entire brain. This 
state of prostration is due to the now well-estab- 

[224] 



i 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

lished fact that, in order to obtain the movements 
of the board, vital or nerve-energy is withdrawn 
from the organism of the experimenter, often out 
of all proportion to the physical health and con- 
stitution. 

In professional mediums who practice their 
power incessantly and for pecuniary gain, this 
prostration is apt to be so great that they be- 
come complete nervous wrecks after a time. It 
was the recognition of this fact which caused the 
well-known physicist, Sir Wm. Barrett, to write : 
"I have observed the steady downward course of 
all mediums who sit regularly." The inexpe- 
rienced experimenter scarcely ever attributes this 
condition to the true cause, and it is difficult to 
convince him that a practice, seemingly so simple 
and harmless, could be attended by such direful 
effects. But if, in spite of these warnings, the 
experiments are continued, other symptoms ap- 
pear which do not leave any doubt about the mat- 
ter. The general health begins to fail, there 
manifests itself a kind of apathy and weariness 
of life, which quite unfits the person for the ordi- 
nary duties of life and deprives him of all interest 
in them, and which is only relieved by resort to 
the board. Communication with the "friends" 
of the unseen world now becomes the one exciting 
and all-absorbing interest and occupation to 

[225] 



The New Black Magic 

which all other duties and interests are subor- 
dinated. 

And in proportion as physical vigor, and there- 
fore the power of resistance and of will, decline, 
and passivity and apathy increase, the spirit gains 
closer access to the mind, directs and influences 
its operations, and, in the course of time, gets 
complete control of it. When this control has 
been effected and the power of resistance has 
been quite broken down, the mind becomes more 
and more susceptible to suggestion and less and 
less able to exercise with regard to it discrimi- 
nating and controlling power. The messages then 
come with great regularity and conciseness, im- 
mediately the experimenter touches the board; 
but their moral tone is seen to have undergone a 
very great change. From the normal and healthy 
mind's point of view they are distinctly immoral 
and mischievous in their aim and character. 
They may refer to a husband or wife whose loy- 
alty is questioned, or they may throw suspicion 
upon the motives prompting the actions of 
friends or relatives, especially if they happen to 
object to these experiments. Or, in the case of 
young people, the message may hint that the es- 
tablished laws of morality are, after all, only con- 
ventional laws, framed by man, and that it is not 
necessary to be so strict — that certain instincts, 

[226] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

imparted to human nature, were imparted by God 
and may be lawfully obeyed, and that a time has 
come when men must not allow themselves to 
be enslaved by these old-time fetters any longer. 
The Christian law is ridiculed and Christian cus- 
toms and practices are declared to be old-fash- 
ioned and out of date. 

And these suggestions are made in the most 
subtle manner, in exalted language, appealing to 
the youthful imagination and to dangerous ten- 
dencies latent in all men, and when it is borne 
in mind that the invisible counsellor who makes 
these suggestions is believed to be a kindly father 
or mother, who could only desire the well-being 
of her child and that the experimenter's power 
of discrimination is lost, one can imagine how 
far this kind of mischief can be carried. 

As the "psychic development" advances the 
entire mental and moral nature of the experi- 
menter becomes disordered and he discovers to 
his cost that, while it was an easy thing for him 
to open the mental door by which the mind could 
be invaded, it is a difficult, if not an impossible 
thing, to shut that door and to expel the invader. 
For the impulse to communicate or to write now 
asserts itself imperatively and incessantly, at all 
hours of the day and in the midst of every kind 
of occupation and, in the end, even at night, 

[227] 



The New Black Magic 

either suddenly awakening the victim or prevent- 
ing him from securing any refreshing sleep. A 
pitiable condition of mental and moral collapse, 
often terminating in suicide or insanity, is fre- 
quently the ultimate result. 

Some years ago I came in personal contact 
with a lady who had developed the power of au- 
tomatic writing and who retired to bed every 
night with sheets of paper and a pencil by her 
bedside. The impulse to seize the pencil would 
assert itself suddenly and imperatively, and she 
could secure only an occasional hour of sleep by 
devoting many preceding hours to the writing. 
The lady was a physical and mental wreck. 

Of the many cases of which I have record I 
especially remember that of a young man in an 
office in London who had fallen a helpless victim 
to these experiments. While making an entry in 
a ledger his hand would suddenly be jerked up 
and down and the pen would then write down 
wholly extraneous matter, often of a most offen- 
sive character. He found it impossible to hold 
his appointment. 

The editor of one of our weekly publications 
quite recently sent me the names and addresses 
of three persons in one locality who had to be 
confined to the asylum in consequence of these 
practices, and respecting whom the attending 

[228] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

physician stated that "the use of the ouija-board 
had brought about a state of dementia." 

But lest anyone should imagine that I am mak- 
ing my case too strong and that I am overstating 
the seriousness of the matter, I will quote what an 
American scientific student of the subject has to 
say about it. Dr. Hereward Carrington sums up 
his warnings against the practice of automatic 
writing in the following words: 54 

"I doubt not that hundreds of persons become 
insane every year by means of these experiments 
with the planchette board, 55 as the present sub- 
ject would have done had she not stopped her 
experimenting in time. . . . 

"The way the board swore on occasions was 
extraordinary, and on several occasions it called 
Mrs. C. and others names which they had never 
heard till they saw them spelled out on paper, and 
are of such a nature that I cannot give them 
here." 

Or, as Dr. Carrington says in his introduction 
to the work of a foreign savant : 

"Those who deny the reality of these facts, 
who treat the whole problem as a 'joke,' regard 
planchette as a toy, and deny the reality of powers 
and influences which work unseen, should ob- 

M The Problems of Psychical Research. 
M A Modification of Ouija. 

[229] 



The New Black Magic 

serve the effects of some of the spiritistic mani- 
festations. They would no longer, I imagine, 
scoff at these investigations and be tempted to 
call all mediums merely frauds, but would be in- 
clined to admit that there is a true 'terror of the 
dark' and that there are 'principalities and 
powers' with which we, in our ignorance, toy, 
without knowing and realizing the frightful con- 
sequences which may result upon this tampering 
with the unseen world." 

Some people, and amongst them scientific men 
of standing, are apt to defend these practices and 
to encourage them because, in their opinion, they 
furnish tangible evidence that our departed 
friends and relatives have survived the death of 
the body and that their individuality has suffered 
no change. They claim, to put it briefly, that the 
age-long problem perplexing mankind is solved 
by the ouija-board. 

At first sight this contention seems reasonable 
and many cannot see how it is to be controverted. 
But fuller reflection must disclose the fallacy 
that underlies it. For centuries distracted hu- 
man nature has stood by the open grave and, dis- 
satisfied with the answers furnished by the Chris- 
tion Religion and by the soul's emphatic testi- 
mony, has besought God with tears to give proof 
that the person departed is not really dead. Mil- 

[230] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

lions of distracted minds are asking for such 
proof today and, indeed, this is one of the causes 
which are so effectually promoting the revival of 
Spiritism at the present time. 

But only very rarely, under exceptional and 
peculiar conditions, and without any initiative 
on the human side, has such proof been given. 

Are we then seriously to credit the claim that, 
while God, in His wisdom, denies the evidence 
craved for in earnest prayer to the mass of man- 
kind and to the very best of them, He furnishes 
that evidence through the ouija-board,to the most- 
frivolous inquirers, and by means unquestionably 
perilous to the mental and moral health of those 
through whom it is furnished? 

Can anything more improbable be conceived? 
If this were really so would we not have to part 
with our instinctive feelings of reverence for 
God, and our sense of His holiness and justice, 
and would we not have to admit, in view of the 
facts which I have presented, that such a method 
of disclosing so significant a truth to us, is of- 
fensive to our reason and common-sense? It is 
surely only a science which has entered on 
crooked paths and which has lost all sense of the 
true proportion of things that can make such a 
claim and that can induce inexperienced persons 
to venture on these perilous quicksands. 

[231 ] 



The New Black Magic 

Very justly remarks the American psycholo- 
gist, Dr. Quackenbos : 56 

"It may well be asked, if communication with 
the dead be lawful and fraught with satisfaction, 
would God have concealed from us so innocent a 
means of gratifying the most intense longings of 
human nature ? The answer of the Centuries is : 
No! The proof of immortality is not to be 
sought for in the vaporings of Spiritism." 

In view, then, of the undeniable and now very 
widely admitted facts stated here in mere out- 
line, one cannot warn the public too earnestly 
against these practices — seemingly so simple and 
harmless and yet attended, in so many instances, 
by such fatal consequences. They have about 
them a peculiar and almost irresistible fascina- 
tion for a certain order of mind, and that fasci- 
nation becomes intensified by the very elusiveness 
of the phenomena and the lack of definiteness and 
finality which characterizes the communications. 
The mind is kept in a chronic state of expectancy, 
incessantly craving for further disclosures. It is, 
therefore, the first step that counts, and parents 
and educators should see to it that that first step is 
never taken. Where the practice has been care- 
lessly indulged in, it should be rigidly discontinued 
before any appreciable degree of development is 

"Body and Spirit. 

[232] 



The Truth About the Ouija-Board 

reached. For more reasons than one the board 
should not be tolerated in any Christian house- 
hold or placed within the reach of the young. 
And we should also guard them against coming- 
in contact with a form of modern literature call- 
ing itself scientific in which these practices are 
encouraged by men whose one aim is to obtain 
evidence of human survival, but who have no 
regard for the moral and physical well-being of 
those to whom they appeal. It should be pointed 
out that all truly scientific and informed men, 
such as Dr. Mercier in London, Dr. Viollet in 
France, and the late Dr. Lapponi in Italy, have 
branded these practices as dangerous to mental 
and moral health, and have seriously warned 
against all such tampering with the unseen world. 
They assure us, on the ground of personal ex- 
perience, that the number of the victims of these 
cults is increasing day by day. 

The practice itself is no discovery of modern 
science — nothing new in the world of phenomena, 
as some would have us believe; on the contrary, 
it is as old as man. In China the little board has 
been known for centuries and is admitted to be a 
means of spirit-intercourse. In one form or an- 
other these practices were indulged in by the 
pagan races and may indeed be considered to be 
characteristic of the pagan civilizations. They 

[233] 



The New Black Magic 

were condemned and forbidden by the laws of 
Moses because they were known to undermine 
and destroy the true spiritual life of the people. 
Tliey fell into disuse in proportion as the light 
of Christianity spread through the world. Their 
revival, in our time, is not a step forward but a 
step backward ; it is a return to distinctly heathen 
and anti-Christian beliefs and practices and addi- 
tional evidence of the fact that the world is once 
more relapsing into paganism. 



[234] 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 

The manuscript of this work was completed and was 
in the hands of the publishers when Prof. W. J. Craw- 
ford's second book on the "Phenomena of Spiritism" 
appeared. I could not, therefore, consider it in its 
bearing upon the standpoint taken up in my work. 
But I regard the book as of high scientific value, present- 
ing as it does the conclusions of a careful and painstak- 
ing investigator who has guarded against every pos- 
sibility of error and deception and who has the cour- 
age of his opinions. 

Prof. Crawford's book certainly demolishes once for 
all the notion still entertained by a few inaccurately 
informed {students of the subject that some of the 
earlier scientific experimentators may have been tricked, 
or that the operation of some at present little-known 
mental faculty may explain the phenomena. In view 
of the evidence presented by Prof. Crawford, confirmed 
as it is by scientific testimony from many lands, it 
will be admitted that this view may now be regarded as 
obsolete and unscientific — as an evidence of ignorance 
rather than of superior intellectual insight. 

All these conceivable explanation, it should be borne 
in mind, were weighed and carefully considered for 
years before the positive conclusion held today was 
arrived at. For those who (are accurately and experi- 
mentally acquainted with modern psychical research there 
are today only two problems presenting themselves for 
solution and they may be formulated in the two fol- 
lowing questions : 

i. What is the source and character of the delicate 
substance or plasm displaying! itself in the physical 
phenomena of spiritism? and 

2. What is the nature and aim of the extraneous 

[235] 



The New Black Magic 

intelligence or intelligences operating in the sense world 
by its means? 

With almost everything Prof. Crawford has to say 
on the first point I am in agreement. 

His conclusions on the second point I find it impos- 
sible to accept and the present book explains in detail 
why I cannot accept them. 

I am las convinced today as I was more than twenty 
years ago that an adequate study of the effects of spiri- 
tistic practice, mental, moral and physical, as a whole 
and not as we observe them in some isolated instance, 
will establish the consistency and reasonableness of my 
position. 

J. G. R. 



[236] 



INDEX 



INDEX 

A 

PAGE 

Apostolic testimony re Spirit-Creed 141 

Aquinas, St. Thomas, on Demonism . .'. 37 

Argument of book summarized 202 

Armstrong, Prof., on spiritistic practices 171 

Atonement of Jesus Christ and human nature 136 

and Holy Scripture 129 

Sir R. Reynolds on ., ! 131 

and Saints and Martyrs „ 130 

Augustine, Saint, on Eternal Punishment 146 

Automatic Writing, Sir Wm. Barrett on 98 

Doctor Carrington on perils of 201 

Stainton Moses on effects of 67 

perils of 56 

cases showing perils of 61 

B 

Barrett, Sir. Wm., on perils of spiritistic practices. .39, 55, 61 

on probable nature of some spirits 200 

Branco, Prof., on the descent of man 114 

Brownson, Dr. O., on fall of man 124 

on spirit-identity 105 

Bruce, H. A., on the subconscious mind 87 

Bumueller, Dr., on the descent of man 114 

C 

Carrington, Dr. H., on medium's loss of weight 68 

on perils of automatic writing 58, 201 

on spirit-impersonation 83 

Chesterton, G., on fall of man 119 

on religious belief 10 

Christian Thought and Experience, evidence of Ill 

Christianity, Rev. M. Maher on truth of 134 

and Spiritism, not reconcilable 11 

Claim, the, of Modern Science 3 

of Science specified 19 

Crookes, Prof., on effects of mediumship 69 

Crozier, Dr, J, B„ on spiritistic practices 169 

D 

Decree of Holy Office 203 

De Maistre, on the heart of man 123 

[239] 



Index 

PAGE 

Descent of man, Prof. Branco on 115 

Dr. Bumueller on 114 

Dr. Driesch on 116 

Dr. J. Ranke on 115 

Dr. R. Virchow on 116 

Doyle, Sir Conan, false assertion of 138 

on spirit-impersonation 85 

E 

Eternal Punishment, Saint Augustine on 146 

W. E. Gladstone on 150, 157 

and human reason 151 

Dom A. Vonier on 151, 153, 156 

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience Ill 

of Common Sense 165 

of Fact and Experience 49 

of History 31 

of True. Science 79 

F 

Fact and Experience, Evidence of 49 

Fall of Man, Dr. O. Brownson on 124 

G. Chesterton on 119 

Prof. Wm. James on 123 

Dom A. Vonier on 120 

Flammarion, Prof., on spirit-identity 106 

Funk, Dr., a case of spirit-impersonation 91 

G 

Gardner, Prof. P., on Necromancy 172 

Gladstone, W. E., on Eternal Punishment 150, 157 

on Orthodoxy 136 

H 

Hatch, Dr. B. F., "Spiritualism unveiled" 182 

a HelI and its Problems" 147 

History, The Evidence of 31 

Holy Office, Decree of 203 

Holy Scripture, on the Atonement of Jesus Christ 129 

teaching of, on Necromancy, &c 34 

on the testing of Spirits 142 

Hubbel, Mr., "Facts and Fancies in Spiritualism" 183 

I 

Immortality and Reason 174 

inference, the inevitable, from arguments presented 193 

[240] 



Index 

PAGE 

J 

Jacks, Dr. L. P., on spirit-identity 85 

Jacolliot, M., on spiritism in India 34 

James, Prof. Wm, on the fall of Man 123 

on the limitations of spirits 89 

Jesus Christ, M. Troubetzkoy on Person of 128 

Justin, Saint, on spirit-manifestations 37 

L 

Lapponi, Dr., on contradictory teaching of spirits 43 

Leaf, Mr., on spirit-impersonation 84 

Lillie, Mr., on mediumship of Stainton Moses 63 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, on supposed safeguards 55 

on spirit-identity 82 

Lombroso, Prof., on medium's loss of weight in material- 
ization 69 

London "Times," on spirit-revelations ,,,,,, 177 

M 

Maeterlinck, Mr., on spirit-identity 97 

on source of spirit-messages 98 

on triviality of spirit-messages 178 

Maher, Rev. M., on the truth of Christianity 134 

Materialization, description of process 64 

experiments of Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing 69 

Carrington on loss of weight in 68 

Lombroso on loss of weight in 69 

Mediums, their status 184 

Mediumship, disastrous effects of 57 

not a natural gift 51 

process contrary to nature 53 

Prof. Crookes on effects of 69 

Mind-passivity, an open door 5 

Modern Science, claims of 3 

Myers, F. W. H., on spirit-identity 98 

N 

Necromancy, Catholic Encyclopedia on 33 

Prof. P. Gardner on 172 

New International Encyclopedia on 32 

"New Revelation," The, a great delusion 193 

conditions for considering a 26 

O 

Orthodoxy, W. E. Gladstone on .• 136 

Ouija-Board, truth about the 207 

[2 4 I] 



Index 

PAGE 

p 

Pasteur, Prof., on discernment of divine truth 161 

Preface iii 

Prince, Dr. Morton, on the subconscious mind 87 

Q 

Quackenbos, ,Dr. J. D., 

on unlawfulness of Spiritism 176 

R 

Ranke, Dr. J., on the descent of man 115 

"Raymond," worthlessness of evidence respecting identity of 131 

Reason and common sense, evidence of 165 

Reynolds, Sir Russell, on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. . 131 

S 

Schrenck-Notzing, Dr. Von, on materialization phenomena.. 69 

on effect of materialization on medium 72 

Science, Evidence of True 79 

Spirit-identity, Dr. O. Brownson on 105 

Dr. Carrington on 83 

Sir Conan Doyle on 85 

Prof. Flammarion on 106 

Dr. L. P. Jacks on 85 

Mr. Leaf on 84 

Sir Oliver Lodge on 82 

Mr. Maeterlinck on 97 

F. W. H. Myers on 98 

Spirit-impersonation, a striking case of 89 

Evidence of „ 82 

Dr. Funk's case of 91 

Spiritism and Holy Scripture 142 

Spiritistic Phenomena, Dr. R. Wallace on reality of 112 

Spiritistic Practices, Prof. Armstrong on 171 

Dr. Carrington on perils of 200 

Dr. J. B. Crozier on 169 

Spirit-messages, comic element in. 178 

worthlessness of 94 

Spirit-Photography, Traill Taylor on 93 

worthlessness of evidence of 94 

Stainton Moses, on effects of automatic writing 67 

on lying Spirits 43 

on mind-passivity 53 

on Spiritism and Christianity 12 

Subconscious Mind, the, H. A. Bruce on 87 

Dr. Morton Prince on 87 

Summary of argument of Book 202 

[242] 



Index 

PAGE 
T 

Table of Contents ii 

Traill Taylor on Spirit-photography 93 

Troubetzkoy, on the Person of Jesus Christ 128 

True Science, the evidence of 79 

Truth, the, about the Ouija-Board 207 

U 

"Unseen World," by Rev. A. M. Lepicier, O.S.M 193 

V 

Venzano, Dr., on reality of spiritistic phenomena 50 

Virchow, Dr. R., on the descent of man 116 

Vonier, Dom. A., on Eternal Punishment 152, 153, 156 

on the fall of man 120 

W 

Wallace, Dr. A. Russel, on reality of spiritistic phenomena 112 

Williams, J. H., on Christ's teaching re future life 149 



[ 2 43 ] 



"Has the stage, the so-called artistic temperament, 
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